


Supergirl Lives

by kellsbells



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: And Kara doesn't, F/F, Lena does what she has to do, Minor Character Deaths, Nobody stays dead in my fics unless they deserve it, and to end a huge threat, but she dies at the beginning, so bear that in mind, to keep Kara safe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-04-07 22:02:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 69,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14090625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kellsbells/pseuds/kellsbells
Summary: Supergirl did not die with dignity. She did not die stopping an apocalypse or saving the earth. She died drowning in her own blood, vomiting the green-flecked liquid all over the alleyway behind the Chinese restaurant that happened to serve the best potstickers in National City. Her phone buzzed inside her bag, the name 'Lena Luthor' flashing up on the screen. Lena Luthor, the unwitting delivery system for the murder weapon used to kill the last daughter of Krypton. Lena, the daughter and sister of crazed alien haters. Lena, who had just wanted to make Kara's day a little brighter, the way Kara always did for her.





	1. One

* * *

Supergirl did not die with dignity. She did not die stopping an apocalypse or saving the earth. She died drowning in her own blood, vomiting the green-flecked liquid all over the alleyway behind the Chinese restaurant that happened to serve the best potstickers in National City. Her phone buzzed inside her bag, the name 'Lena Luthor' flashing up on the screen. Lena Luthor, the unwitting delivery system for the murder weapon used to kill the last daughter of Krypton. Lena, the daughter and sister of crazed alien haters. Lena, who had just wanted to make Kara's day a little brighter, the way Kara always did for her. 

 

It was a pretty ordinary day for Lena. Get up, get ready for another day of working her fingers to the bone trying to steer LCorp single-handedly in a new direction. Another day wrestling with misogyny and xenophobia and man-babies who didn't understand that a woman could and would tell them what to do. Another day when a lunchtime visit from Kara Danvers had made her smile so widely that she was embarrassed by her own transparent need to be near her friend. 

 

They set a tentative date for dinner, both understanding that work could and often did get in the way. But they made it, and Lena pre-ordered Kara's favourite foods, of which they were many, along with a healthy vegetable dish for herself. They talked about their workdays, about Alex and Maggie's surprising decision to get engaged, about the new inventions that Winn and Lena were working on together. And then Kara's phone buzzed. 

 

Lena was disappointed, but this was how their evenings usually panned out, with one or other of them being dragged off to some work emergency or another. Lena hugged Kara goodbye, but Kara's hug in return wasn't quite as strong as usual, and though she was talking normally, her eyes were a little glassy. Then she was gone, disappearing around the corner of the restaurant. 

 

Lena finished her wine quickly and paid the bill, not noticing the member of the kitchen staff who was staring at her fixedly as she left the restaurant. She didn't hear him make the phone call confirming that the job was done, nor did she hear that he died seconds later from a brain aneurysm caused by a device invented by her own mother. She was thinking about Kara, and she decided to call her friend, just to check she was okay. Maybe it was stupid, but Kara just hadn't looked right when she left. Kara didn't answer her phone, however. So Lena called CatCo and when she spoke to Snapper Carr, he lived up to his name, saying he hadn't called Kara and to stop bothering him. 

 

She called her driver and asked him to pick her up at the back of the restaurant, deciding to check that Kara hadn't been abducted or something. She turned the corner and saw nothing, but at the back of the restaurant there was a heap of... something. She moved nearer, taking her taser from her bag silently just in case. There was no danger to her, however. She saw a flash of blonde hair covered in black liquid, and ran the few steps to find her friend's body already cooling.  

 

Alex told her afterwards that she did everything she could. That there was no saving someone who was already gone. She remembered later the taste of Kara's blood on her lips from the first kiss they never got to have as she tried to resuscitate Kara. She remembered distinctly pulling open Kara's shirt to do chest compressions and seeing a familiar crest on her chest. She decided not to call 911, calling Alex and then Winn from Kara’s phone. She didn't know how she managed to get any words out, however. She remembered Alex and a team from the DEO arriving in a fake ambulance and taking Kara with them, leaving Winn to drive her. She remembered the look on Hank's face when they arrived at the DEO, the look of a man who had lost everything all over again. She remembered the sound the zipper made when Dr Hamilton closed the body bag.

 

And then Lena Luthor remembered nothing at all. 

 

***

 

It had been six months. Six months since Kara, her best friend, had died without dignity in the alleyway behind a Chinese restaurant. Lena had been to the end of her sanity and back, and she knew that she wouldn’t be here at all if Alex, Maggie and Winn hadn’t rallied around her, despite her despised name. James Olsen had apparently considered her a suspect, but when he saw her in person he dropped that accusation almost immediately. Any lingering doubts he had were beaten out of him (figuratively speaking. Probably.) by Cat Grant, who had visited Lena a number of times since Kara’s passing. Kara and Cat had shared a special relationship, much like Lena and Kara, and Cat was devastated when Kara died only a few months after Cat’s triumphant return to National City.

 

Lena was just beginning to gain weight again, after losing almost half her body weight when Kara was murdered. She wasn’t trying to starve herself, she just couldn’t stomach anything. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that it was food that had killed Kara, or perhaps she just blamed herself and her subconscious was trying to kill her. In any case, she wasn’t out of the woods, but she was able to stand unassisted, now.

 

Since Kara’s death, Lena had failed to see the point of anything. What was the point, exactly, of trying to do good in a world where Supergirl was dead because of her mother? What was the point of trying to turn her company’s name around, trying to turn the Luthor name around, when hearing it made Lena want to rip her ears from her skull so she never had to hear it again? The Luthor family had taken everything from her, everything she’d ever loved, and she would never, ever forgive them for it.

 

She was thinking about Lillian when it happened for the first time. She was picturing her mother’s smug face, the way she’d looked the last time Lena saw her. And she was thinking about wringing the woman’s neck, slowly. Watching the light leave her eyes. Watching her die, watching her choke. She wanted Lillian to die in agony, for her to die alone in filth. Lena wanted Lillian to die the way she’d made Kara die.

 

The apartment walls caught fire, and the roar startled Lena so much that she fell off her chair. She was still weak, so running anywhere was out of the question. Her first thought was that this was Lillian, that Lillian was finally coming to kill her. But something about that didn’t feel right. The fire felt… familiar. She reached out a hand, and a flame from the wall licked out, found the tip of her fingers, touched them. Lena jerked her hand back, and was astonished to find that she wasn’t hurt. The fire began to fade, leaving rapidly fading scorch marks on the wall. A few minutes later, no-one would have known anything about it, other than the smell of burnt fabric.

 

Lena sat in stunned silence for an hour, staring at her unblemished fingertips.

 

An hour after that, her appetite roared to life, and she raided her fridge for fruit and yoghurt, first. Then ten minutes later, she assembled a sandwich from some cooked meat that Alex had to have brought for her, because she didn’t normally buy that sort of thing. Ten minutes after _that_ , she was on the phone to Kara’s favourite pizza place, ordering two large pizzas with the weird combos that Kara used to have – tandoori chicken, pepperoni, jalapenos, thick sundried tomato sauce, and the other that sounded like a mish-mash of Tex-Mex foods – sour cream, chicken, peppers, spicy sauce. When they arrived Lena ripped into them, feeling like she was standing outside of her body watching incredulously. Within another ten minutes, the food was gone, and Lena’s stomach was giving her some respite, for now.

 

She was sitting on the couch, pizza boxes and plates discarded around her, and she stared at her fingers again, completely lost.

 

_“What’s happening to me?”_

 

Lena was many things, but before anything else, she was a scientist. So when she woke the following morning to find her strength completely restored, she decided it was time to investigate. She’d starved herself for such a long time that her body had cannibalised its own muscle mass, leaving her weak as a kitten. So to wake up to find her legs and arms back to normal strength… she had no idea what was happening. So she set up an experiment. In a fireproof room in the R&D labs at LCorp, she dressed herself in a fire-resistant suit with an oxygen tank inside. Should a fire burn for more than ten seconds inside this room, the security system would suck the oxygen out, and Lena didn’t really want to suffocate inside her own R&D lab.

 

When she was ready, she thought about Lillian again, and she set the room’s recorders going. Rage built inside of her, and she heard the roar of fire licking at the walls for 10 seconds, before the security system kicked in. She took in a deep breath, startled that it had actually happened again, and all she could hear was the sound of her lungs sucking in oxygen from the small tank on her back. She reset the security system, pulling off the hood of the suit. She pulled up the video feed and watched, heart thumping, as the room spontaneously set on fire, only to be doused ten seconds later.

 

So she wasn’t crazy. Or at least, not entirely.

 

She debated calling Alex or Winn, but decided that she needed more information before she took that step. She wanted to know what she was dealing with, at least in part, before she told anyone else.

 

She stopped at Kara’s favourite Chinese restaurant – not the one she’d died outside of, though. (Lena had bought the entire row of buildings and turned them into a shelter for aliens in need.  It was one way to spite her mother, at least.) She bought a Kara-worthy portion of food, getting extra potstickers as a matter of habit, and it was only when she was home that she realised she’d done it. She cried as she stuffed food into her mouth, wishing that Kara was here. Wishing that she could be wrapped up in her arms again, wishing she could feel the comfort of that touch.

 

She threw a plateful of noodles in kung pao sauce into a plant pot, screeching, as a blanket wrapped itself around her body, pulling tight to hold her securely. Just enough to be comforting. She looked around, but there was no-one there, just a blanket spontaneously floating and wrapping her up in an embrace, just when she was thinking about being held by the woman she… the woman she’d lost.

 

She stood up, shivering, and the blanket fell to the floor, a puppet with its strings cut. She stared at it, and then she closed her eyes, thinking about Kara holding her, and this time she only jumped about a foot when she felt the material wind its way around her. She relaxed again, clearing her mind, and went to grab her phone, propping it up and setting it to record in selfie mode. She repeated the experiment again, checking that it wasn’t her mind playing tricks on her, and then she sent the video to her private server and deleted the original with a program of her own devising that would chomp up all the data into pieces so infinitesimal that it would take a million people a million years to put the video back together. She could never be too careful, and it was more than possible, given the amount of trouble she seemed to attract, that her phone could end up in the hands of someone who could and would use this new information against her.

 

She sat down, pulling out another dish from her huge stash of Chinese food, stuffing it into her mouth with all the grace of Kara Danvers after a long day of reporting. And superhero-ing, of course. The thought made her eyes fill, and she let the tears fall. She would never stop missing Kara, never stop thinking about the warmth that blossomed in her chest every time she saw Kara’s smile. A smile she would never see again.

 

_Eyes that I shall not see again, unless at the door of death’s other kingdom_

 

She finished the food and then ordered more, eating that immediately once it arrived, and then she put herself to bed, letting herself cry in the dark as she thought about Kara, floating in space, alone.

 

It was four days later (or one frozen office and one melted motorcycle later) when she decided she needed help. She called Alex, who sounded surprised when she realised it was Lena calling.

 

“You don’t sound like yourself,” Alex remarked. Lena realised that her voice had been a lot quieter before she had started displaying these powers, probably due to the extreme tiredness she’d been afflicted with because she hadn’t been able to eat.

 

“Well, it’s really me. I have something I need your help with,” Lena said. “Yours and Winn’s, actually, if you both have the time.”

 

“Okay. Shall we come by tonight?” Alex asked.

 

“If you could? Could you meet me at LCorp, if you wouldn’t mind?” Lena asked.

 

“Sure, Lena. I’ll drag Winn too. If he objects I’ll threaten him with my pinkie again.”

 

Lena laughed as Alex hung up the phone. Alex and Winn were like brother and sister, and it was a thing of beauty to watch them interact. It reminded her of how she used to be with Lex, before he went crazy.

 

She was fidgeting restlessly by the time Jess called down to the R&D lab to tell her that Alex and Winn were there. She went up to meet them in the foyer and took them to her secure lab.

 

“So, Lena, what’s this all about?” Alex asked, as Lena saw to it that they had drinks and were comfortable. Like any good hostess should, Lillian had taught her. But then, Lillian had also taught her that no-one would ever love her and that she was lucky to be adopted by a loving family like the Luthors, so maybe she wouldn’t worry so much about being a good hostess in future.

 

“Well, something weird happened the other day,” Lena began.

 

“Yeah, I’ll say,” Winn said, waving at her body in a vague gesture.

 

“What does that mean?” Lena asked, eyes narrowed.

 

“I mean, you have, like, normal muscles and you’re standing up, Lena, and you’re not shaking. I haven’t seen you stand for more than a few minutes for months,” Winn said.

 

“Shit. You’re right! What happened to you, Luthor?” Alex asked, wide-eyed.

 

“Honestly, I don’t know,” Lena said, sitting down and putting her hands in her lap, flat. “I was… I was at home, thinking about Lillian. I was really angry. And the walls of the room caught fire. At first I thought I was going crazy,” Lena said, “but then I held my hand out, and the flame… it reached out, and touched my skin. And I didn’t burn.”

 

She went on to explain the other odd things that had happened, not least of which was her physical condition. She no longer looked anything like a person who’d been on the cusp of starvation for months. She was vital and healthy and she had powers of some kind.

 

“I froze the inside of my office the other day when I was thinking about a board member who was trying to have me ousted from LCorp. Jess has been running things in my absence, but I thought I should speak to her, start thinking about getting back to my old life. And I was thinking about this guy, and how he was so cold. And then I realised that I _was_ cold, and I looked around and the room was covered in ice. About 3 inches thick. I had to pretend it was a malfunctioning prototype, but I could tell Jess didn’t believe me. And last, but not least, I accidentally melted my motorcycle after I read an email from one of the board, again, this time saying that I should learn to listen before I try to sit at the table with the big boys. Next thing I knew, the tyres were melting and the whole thing was a pile of slag a few seconds later. I’m just glad I wasn’t riding it at the time,” Lena finished.

 

“Well,” Alex said, after a moment’s silence. “Do you have any numbers on all of this?” Alex asked. “Any idea how hot the fire is, how cold the room was after you iced it?”

 

“You believe me?” Lena asked, confused.

 

“Why wouldn’t I?” Alex asked. “Not only are you one of the smartest people I know, but your body has healed itself. There’s no way you could have put on that amount of weight and muscle since I saw you last. So let’s see what you’ve got, Luthor.”

 

Lena flinched at the hated name, but she put a memory chip into a receiver on the wall, watching as the recordings of her various experiments played. Winn and Alex stared at her, and then back to the screen, and then at each other.

 

“Lena, has anything like this ever happened before?” Alex asked.

 

“Not to my knowledge,” Lena said.

 

“You know, when Kara… when we found her, and you with her, you were unconscious for almost 48 hours,” Alex said softly. “I mean, at the time I wrote it off as emotional trauma, but we did get some unusual readings from you during that time. Brain activity that probably didn’t belong. I was too… I didn’t really think about it much, and I should have. I’m sorry.”

 

“Oh, come on, Alex,” Lena said, shaking her head. “Like anyone would have expected you to function right then…” She trailed off, heart clenching in her chest.

 

“None of us paid any attention; we just saw that Lena was getting better and we didn’t worry about the weird readings. We had a lot of other stuff on our minds,” Winn said, touching Alex’s arm briefly.

 

There was silence for a few moments, and then Winn jumped up.

 

“So, you gonna show us?”

 

“You want to see?” Lena asked, startled.

 

“Yes! Of course, yes. Show us all the awesome powers!” Winn said, high-fiving Lena, who returned it with a bemused look on her face.

 

“Okay,” she said, and then she got them all outfitted with fire-resistant suits and oxygen before she set the fireproof room on fire again.

 

“Can you get it any hotter?” Alex asked, sounding like Darth Vader through her mask. Lena shrugged, and then concentrated extra hard on throttling Lillian. When the flames turned blue, then white, before being snuffed out by the lab system, she figured that was probably hot enough. Especially once she realised that the safety suits were melting. She gestured at Alex and Winn to discard the suits ASAP, and then led them out into the office area of her secure lab again.

 

“That’s amazing,” Winn said, staring at her in awe. “I can’t believe you got the awesome powers! Why didn’t I spontaneously get powers?”

 

Maybe because you didn’t find the woman you love in an alleyway, dead, killed by your own mother, Lena thought. She kept the words tightly held inside of her, however. It wasn’t Winn’s fault.

 

“Anyway, what are the readings from that last fire?” he asked. Lena pulled them up on screen, and they all stared at the temperature she had reached with the fire.

 

“Jesus,” Alex said. “50,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s as hot as…”

 

“Kara’s heat vision,” Lena finished, as Alex trailed off. She wondered if there was a reason for that, or if it was just an eerie coincidence.

 

“That’s…” Winn started, then trailed off.

 

“Yeah,” Alex said, absently reading the stats from inside the room. “I think you might need better suits.”

 

“Yeah,” Lena said, a little startled.

 

They started experimenting the following day at the DEO, using the various chambers that had been set up for Kara to use and test her powers. Lena froze the ice room almost past its capacity, causing a small crack in one of the instruments. Alex stared at her in a mixture of awe and disbelief, and later told her that even Kara couldn’t reach that temperature with her freeze breath.

 

Lena worked hard on her ability to manipulate physical items with her mind, starting with the unexpected hug from her blanket the night she threw her food most of the way across the room, and culminating in her lifting the Hoshin Frigate with which her mother had tried to exile the alien population of National City. According to Alex, that weighed around a million tonnes. Lena’s mind went off on a tangent, then, because how exactly does one assemble a million-tonne spacecraft? Then she thought about Star Trek and how they built their ships inside massive space stations. It was a few minutes before she was able to absorb the fact that she had actually lifted a physical object that huge. She had realised that this thing, this power, was seriously strong, around about the time when she saw a Mack truck float in front of her, when she felt the weight of it being buoyed up by something she held within her. But to lift something that astronomically huge – it was a little frightening.

 

“Kara stopped that thing? When it was about to make an FTL jump?” Lena asked in disbelief, staring at the Frigate and the puffs of dust that had been displaced when she put it down, carefully.

 

“Yeah,” Alex said, with a smile of pride that faded into realisation, as it always did. Because Kara wasn’t going to be catching any more spacecraft. Lena felt her throat tighten and her eyes sting. Fucking Lillian!

 

She realised far too late that her powers were surging out of control, and she tried to tamp them down, but…

 

The world went white, and then black.

 

***


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some adventures with Lena's powers, as Lena struggles to control her grief and her new abilities

* * *

The Hoshin Frigate had exploded, taking most of the hangar with it, and when J’onn Jonzz dug frantically through the rubble to find his second-in-command and their guest, he found an unconscious Alex being held in the arms of Lena Luthor, whose nose and ears were bleeding profusely. There was an energy field crackling around them, holding back the rubble and keeping both women alive. J’onn pulled the remainder of the rubble away and Lena let go of the energy field, gasping. J’onn took them both to the infirmary as quickly as he could, not even bothering to go around obstacles; he just phased through, passengers and all. When he set them down gently on their respective gurneys, he noted with some relief that Alex was already waking. Lena, however, was completely unconscious, blood running freely from her eyes, now, too. Sending a prayer on her behalf to H’ronmeer and to Rao, in Kara’s memory, he called the doctor and all available staff to tend to the patients. He couldn’t lose anyone else, he thought, before he put on the mask of the Director and left his competent medical staff to do their jobs. 

 

***

 

When Lena woke, it was to a headache the size of a mother talaa’k. She could feel every ounce of brain matter pulsing in pain, and she groaned loudly in complaint.

 

“Wow, Luthor. Remind me not to really piss you off.”

 

Lena opened one eye reluctantly, finding herself looking up at a too-bright ceiling above her. She groaned again before turning her head towards Alex’s voice. Alex was looking at her in amusement, one eyebrow up.

 

“What in the name of Jesus happened?” Lena asked, both because of her aching head and because Alex’s face was just one huge bruise.

 

“You blew up the Frigate,” Alex said, offhandedly, and Lena gasped.

 

“Shit! How the hell did I do that?” she asked, aghast.

 

“I think…” Alex began, but then J’onn Jonzz appeared behind her.

 

“I heard the surface thoughts you had at the time, Miss Luthor, and it appears that you were thinking about Supergirl, and that led you to think about your mother…” J’onn said, before the lamp above the bed shattered explosively, showering all three of them with glass. J’onn coughed before continuing, in a dry voice, “Which led to you somehow completely and explosively dismantling the Frigate. Thank you for that, by the way. The President was concerned that someone like… Cadmus, might try to steal it again for the purposes of sending aliens away. We were debating the best way to destroy it. Thankfully, the explosion seems to have been just energy, rather than fire, so a lot of the components can be re-used.”

 

Lena was relieved. She thought that paying to replace or repair a giant spaceship from a different civilisation under a different sun might have stretched even her considerable financial resources.

 

“So, would someone like to tell me why I wasn’t informed about these experiments of yours, and about Miss Luthor’s powers?” J’onn asked, a little acerbically.

 

“That’s my fault, sir,” Alex said, eyes forward, body straight, even in a hospital chair. “I thought it would be best if we presented you with a full report on what we were able to record, first. Obviously, her powers are a little stronger than we’d expected.”

 

“Obviously,” J’onn said dryly.

 

_“She reminds me of K’hym,”_ J’onn said, in his rumbling voice.

 

“Who’s K’hym?” Lena asked, confused.

 

J’onn stared at her in shock.

 

“Did you hear that?” he asked, eyes wide.

 

“I heard you say that she – presumably meaning me – reminded you of K’hym. Why?” Lena was confused, and Alex was staring at her now, too.

 

“K’hym was my daughter on Mars. She died several hundred years ago. Can you tell me what she looks like?” J’onn asked.

 

Lena could, and did. “K’hym – she was tiny, wiry rather than bulky, and the crest on her head was sharper than yours. It was from her mother’s side of the family,” Lena said. “Are you doing that?” she asked, unnerved at the clear mental images she was seeing.

 

“No, I’m not. I’m psychic, but all I’m doing right now is thinking. I’m not communicating telepathically, or at least not in the way I know how,” J’onn said.

 

“Oh,” Lena said, trying to take the enormity of that in. She’d just overheard the thoughts of another species. No wonder her headache was the size of a….

 

“Director, do you know what a talaa’k is?” she asked, suddenly realising that she knew what it was, but also knew she’d never seen or heard of one before.

 

“I do. They were a large creature on Mars, a little bigger than your woolly mammoth. Fewer horns, more teeth,” J’onn said.

 

“That was my first thought when I woke. That my headache was the size of a talaa’k. I didn’t think twice about it, I just… I knew what it was, and that was that. But I assume that I have picked up some of your thoughts since you scanned me,” Lena said, thinking things through slowly and logically, as was her habit. “But why am I picking up your thoughts, and no-one else’s?”

 

“Perhaps it’s just because I read your thoughts after the explosion? But I didn’t try to read anything below the surface, so it shouldn’t have affected anything,” J’onn said, puzzled. “Can you try reading Alex?”

 

Lena looked at her friend, one eyebrow quirked up in question. Alex sighed.

 

“Fine. But you’re sworn to secrecy, Luthor, about anything you see in there. Possible mind-reader’s promise, please.”

 

Lena nodded gravely. Alex gestured for her to get on with it.

 

Lena concentrated, but she couldn’t hear anything. It was like there was nothing to read. She looked back up at Director J’onzz, wondering why she could read him. She could still see his wife and his daughter playing with a ball outside the caverns where they lived, laughing with joy and amusement as they both ended up covered from head to toe in red dust. Why could she read him and not Alex?

 

J’onn wiped away a tear discreetly, and Lena wondered, suddenly, if that was the difference.

 

“Alex, could you think about something that really makes you emotional? Just… not Kara, please,” Lena clarified. Alex nodded, swallowing, and closed her eyes.

 

“ _She changed everything. If she hadn’t been there, I might have climbed into that funeral pod with… no, you can’t think about that. Okay. She’s so short, but she’s so strong, and I love the way she can really take charge, like just grab me and push me…”_

“That’s quite enough, Agent Danvers,” Lena said, shuddering and backing out of Alex’s mind hastily. “I think it’s related to emotion rather than being actual mind-reading. I don’t know if that’s different from your power, J’onn. But I definitely know more about Maggie now than I want to,” Lena said, dryly. She mentally looked off to one side, averting the eyes of her mind from images of Maggie’s skin, how it felt, how it tasted…

 

“Jesus. It’s like when someone says don’t think about a pink elephant,” Alex said, blushing, as she saw Lena wince and try to cover her eyes.

 

“Yeah. There’s definitely something pink in those images that I don’t want to look at,” Lena retorted.

 

The barrage of mental images slowed and then stopped as Lena thought desperately about dog poop, vomit, ear wax – anything but the pictures Alex had been inadvertently broadcasting to her. It took a few minutes before she was able to calm herself enough to open her eyes.

 

“Okay, Miss Luthor. We need to take some scans. I’ll go grab Dr Hamilton. Once we have an idea of where your abilities are being generated, we should have more of an idea of your limitations and how to help you control yourself. We don’t need you accidentally blowing up National City because someone cuts you off in traffic,” J’onn said, with a hint of a smile.

 

Lena nodded, lying back a little, and listened to her pulse thudding in her brain. There had been so many changes in such a short time. She couldn’t absorb it all.

 

“It’s going to be okay, you know,” Alex said, touching Lena’s wrist gently.

 

“I hope you’re right,” Lena said, with a tight smile. But inside, the words echoed in her head. Kara was gone. Nothing was ever going to be okay again.

 

***

 

Three weeks later, Lena’s powers were growing, still. In number and in power. She was able to fly, slowly and with concentration, by placing a field around her body that repelled gravity. She lessened or increased the strength of the field to ascend and descend, and controlled her direction with her telekinesis. It took a lot of her mental energy, but her energy, too, was increasing. Scans showed that one section of her brain, the left parahippocampal gyrus, had increased in size and activity levels exponentially. Careful examination had shown some scarring on the corresponding area of her skull.

 

“Do you have any idea how you got injured?” Alex had asked, when they first found the scarring.

 

“I have a vague recollection of being in hospital, or something like a hospital maybe? When I was very young. After I arrived at the Luthors. But I can hardly ask them, can I?” Lena had replied.

 

Alex nodded, humming to herself thoughtfully. A week later, she showed up at Lena’s office with a thick file. A Cadmus file.

 

“What is this?” Lena asked, frowning. She didn’t like to be reminded of Cadmus, because…

 

SMASH!

 

… she wanted to keep some of her furniture. Dammit, that had been _really_ good Scotch. 

 

Alex had just ducked casually as the bottle shot past her head, shattering against the far wall of the office.

 

“I had some thoughts. Like, that’s an unusual area of the brain to have extra activity for no reason. It’s related to memory and it’s thought to be the area of the brain – the human brain, obviously – that’s responsible for psychic powers. The activity readings in that area are just… I’ve never seen anything like it. So I got to thinking… your mother and brother were both known for their crazy experiments. So I put in a request for any Cadmus records from back then, before they went rogue. Any subject who might meet your description. They had you recorded as Tess Mercer, but from the timeframe, the fact that your middle name is Lutessa, and the fact that Lillian Luthor,” Alex ducked as a paperweight threw itself from Lena’s desk into the glass coffee table, shattering both, “was marked down as the doctor of record, I figured ‘Tess’ was most likely to be you.”

 

“Okay, so what happened?” Lena asked, once she’d absorbed what Alex was telling her. (And made a mental note not to ever buy anything made of glass again.)

 

“I think you should read it… maybe in your fireproof room, or at least somewhere with no breakable objects. You know, like bottles, or paperweights, or cities?” Alex said. Lena rolled her eyes. She was getting better with her control. There was only one thing (one person) that set off her telekinesis or pyrokinesis involuntarily. But since that person was exactly who was likely to be in the file, Alex was probably right.

 

“You make a good point,” she conceded, pursing her lips.

 

“Okay. Come talk to me when you’re ready not to blow me up, okay? Or call and I’ll come here.”

 

Lena had read the contents of the file more than a few times since, and had been unsurprised to find that, while her initial injury had been caused by a lab accident, the extra development in the left parahippocampal gyrus was the result of a kryptonite-infused energy beam that Lex had been developing in an attempt to give himself a version of Superman’s powers.

 

**_Subject Tess Mercer caught in lab explosion due to volatile kryptonite compound. Immediately following the incident, subject’s eyes were seen to glow and all of the glass in the immediate area shattered spontaneously. This happened for two days each time the subject was left without sedation. Once the swelling in subject’s brain receded, so did the incidents. Attempts to enhance area with Kryptonite-powered growth ray were unsuccessful in evoking any telekinetic response. Experiments discontinued after several weeks. LLuthor._ **

 

The first time she’d read the short, dispassionate response, she melted the walls of the fireproof room, and had a visit from Homeland Security and what must have been half the US army, who believed she had triggered some sort of nuclear device. J’onn had had to call President Marsdin herself before the agents would leave. It was decided by the DEO in consultation with the President that they needed to build a facility for Lena alone, somewhere where she could go to use her powers but not put others at risk. J’onn and the President were concerned at the strength of her powers, and at her lack of control. When Lena read the Cadmus report and looked around at the melted remains of her fireproof room, noticing that she was the only thing in a 20 foot radius that hadn’t melted or been obliterated entirely, she was inclined to agree with them. If she had burned any hotter, she would have brought the LCorp building down, and a little hotter than that, and she might have set the Earth’s atmosphere on fire. The look on Winn’s face when he told her that… it sobered her, because he looked frightened of her. Winn, her teddy bear of a friend, looked _frightened_ of her.

 

She and Winn started work on a new material that would contain her powers. They came up with a modified sort of cement mixture developed on Daxam which had a melting point far past anything Lena had achieved before with her powers, just in case they continued to increase in strength. A team from the DEO - combined with some of Lena’s best engineers - began work on building the facility almost immediately. Ironically enough, they used parts of the Hoshin Frigate to build the foundations and supports for the building, since they were made from a nearly indestructible metal from the other side of the Milky Way. Since the metal had already withstood the effects of her telekinesis, they had to find a way to mould it into new shapes using a contact of Maggie’s from the alien bar who was some sort of engineer. She wished she could talk to her mother about it, tell her about how the use of alien technology – freely-given technology – was helping the DEO keep the world a little safer. But then Lillian Luthor would never listen, so what was the point of dreaming about telling her anything?

 

Lena practised her mind reading skills as much as she could. It was one of the most difficult of her powers to initialise, because she generally needed an emotion to latch onto, leading Winn to call her a telempath, a name which she didn’t really think was worthy of giggling at. Certainly not for as long as Winn did. Lena was getting better, however, and had managed to read a few people without a strong emotion being projected. It took a lot of her mental energy, and her bill for food had quadrupled – at least – since she started accessing these powers.

 

When she thought about how much she had to eat to keep going, she always thought of Kara, and while those thoughts no longer led to explosive rage - or at least most of the time – Lena was still grieving. She had gone through the five stages and back again, and had found herself standing on her balcony with a bottle of scotch in hand on more than one occasion, wishing she could hear the snap of that cape just one more time. If she looked up, she told herself, she’d see Kara hovering there, one leg lifted delicately, as if she were a ballet dancer descending from a lift. She was so beautiful. She’d land next to Lena and take away the Scotch, and she’d pull Lena into her strong arms, and Lena would feel safe again.

 

It was usually a few days before she was able to return to work after one of those nights on the balcony. Her headaches were epic, both from the drinking and from the work that her brain was doing to develop and control her powers. Alex was working on an analgesic that would ease the pain, but she wasn’t sure anything would be effective except Lena learning to control her powers.

 

Lena worked with J’onn on developing mental shields so that she didn’t have to listen to anyone else’s thoughts unless she wanted to. It took a lot of effort to maintain them at first, but after a while they were just there, automatic. She and J’onn began to spend a little time together, meditating and using Martian techniques to centre and calm themselves. Lena became immensely grateful for him in a very short space of time, and she could tell that he was just as fond of her as he was of Alex, or of Kara.

 

Cadmus managed to abduct a visiting alien one afternoon, approximately three months after Lena’s powers first emerged, and Alex called to ask if she would be willing to come along to assist the strike team to locate and retrieve the alien diplomat. His race was generally peaceful, but they would not hesitate to go to war in defence of their own.

 

“We really need to get him back safe, and before, we had… anyway, I think we could do with someone with your strengths there, today.”

 

Lena agreed, a little dubious, but she went to the DEO and was outfitted like the rest of the agents, in black tactical gear. Alex insisted she wore Kevlar and took a gun, but Lena knew she didn’t need either. She was powerful enough to take on an army by herself, and her defences so far had been instinctive. Any projectile aimed at her disintegrated or was incinerated long before it reached her, whether she could see it or not. Alex had taken great joy in shooting at Lena and never hitting her. It was good stress relief, she said.

 

Lena shook her head to clear it as they approached the co-ordinates of the Cadmus base. It was underground, underneath the river in fact, and was heavily guarded. That was where she was to come in. She could use her telepathy (or telempathy, as Winn would insist on calling it) and send out a wave that would cause those in her immediate vicinity to sleep. Which meant she had to go in first, alone, because they had yet to find a way to block her powers’ effects on their own agents. The first time she’d tried to control someone in this way, it had been Winn, and he’d slept for a day and a half.

 

“Best sleep I’ve had in years,” he said, grinning, when he finally woke up.

 

She had better control now. It was less intense, but anyone near her who didn’t have some sort of way to jam her power was going to sleep, whether they liked it or not.

 

Lena stepped inside the building, grateful that Winn was talking to her in her earpiece.

 

“Okay, telempath. I have unlocked the doors to your left, you should be safe to go in… 3, 2, 1…”

 

Lena stepped smoothly through the door, sending a soft signal out, a gentle susurration of ‘sleep, sleep’ on repeat, and she saw the minds in her immediate vicinity go from ‘on’ to ‘off’ in her mind’s eye. An awake mind glowed a little, to her internal sight, and a sleeping mind was dark – unless the person was in a vivid dream, then they kind of looked like a rainbow.

 

“So far, so good,” she murmured into her com.

 

“Done well you have, my young padawan,” Winn said, in his Yoda voice. Lena rolled her eyes.

 

She sensed more minds up ahead, and began to project her thoughts outward again. The minds fell away, and she carried on. When she reached the agreed distance – the outside edge of the limit of her power – she told Alex to bring her team in, slowly.

 

She headed inwards, downwards, and found the kidnapped diplomat unconscious on a medical gurney inside of an operating room. There were two surgeons and a nurse asleep on the floor next to him. His abdomen was open, an organ having been removed, sitting in a kidney dish on ice. She shook her head. Cadmus were monsters.

 

“Alex? How is your surgical expertise?” Lena asked through her comm.

 

“Why?” Alex asked, startled.

 

“Our diplomat is on an operating table with a part missing, something that looks like he might need it. Can you come look?”

 

“Okay,” Alex agreed. “Just turn off your mojo.”

 

Lena dimly realised she was still sending out waves, and stopped them immediately. No-one within 200 metres was awake, now – unless there were minds here that she couldn’t sense, or that were perhaps immune to her telepathy. If anyone else approached from within the facility, she should sense them in time to put them to sleep again. If not, she’d have to hope Alex’s people were good at what they did.

 

Alex reached her a few minutes later, looking surprisingly calm.

 

“This is the best mission we’ve had in years,” she said, smiling. “All we had to do was sweep up the sleeping beauties behind you.”

 

“Good to know I’m good for something,” Lena said.

 

Alex laughed, and went to scrub up as well as she could, pushing a surgeon to one side with her foot roughly as she snapped on a fresh pair of gloves. She had a look at the area the surgeons had been working on, and where the organ should have been attached. She made a phone call to her mother, briefly, about the anatomy of the species. Roltikkon, maybe? Lena wasn’t sure, too busy scanning their surroundings for any other minds. After a few minutes, Alex began cutting, precisely, removing stitching from the abdominal wound and replacing the (apparently essential) organ with strong but delicate fingers.

 

“Could you zap here for me, Lena?” she asked, pointing at an area of the alien’s chest where there was a bleeder. Lena concentrated on the area, and as she did it knit itself together, instead of cauterising the bleeder as she’d intended.

 

“Well. That’s new,” Alex said, one eyebrow up.

 

“Yes. It certainly is,” Lena said, frowning. This was just getting stranger. It wasn’t like she was learning her powers, it was like the powers were learning _her_ , in some ways. If she could visualise a thing, it seemed like it was possible.

 

“Well. My daughter has been holding out on me, I see,” Lillian Luthor’s sardonic, cold voice filled the room. Lena looked around, startled, but there was no-one there. Alex pointed behind Lena, where there was a small speaker set into the wall.

 

“I’m hardly holding out on you, Lillian, if I haven’t spoken to you,” Lena said, coldly, her mind scanning as much of the facility as she could for the lights than indicated an awake mind.

 

“Oh, that is cold, darling. You don’t call me mom anymore? Whatever did I do to offend you?” Lillian asked.

 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Lena replied, sarcastically. “Maybe the murder of a certain friend of mine?”

 

“Oh, you mean that alien scum? I did that for you, darling,” Lillian said. She sounded like she believed it. She sounded like she cared for Lena. No wonder Lena was so incredibly fucked up. She could feel the rage building in her, and she wasn’t sure what it would do if it was released under National City.

 

“Alex, get him and yourself out of here, now,” Lena said, urgently. “I don’t know if I can… control this,” she said, through gritted teeth. Alex nodded, eyes wide, and when Lena turned her head, she caught sight of herself in the shiny steel of the door. Her eyes were glowing green.

 

“Go,” she repeated, falling to her knees, and Alex took off, pushing the alien on his gurney out and away from Lena. Lena started going through the mental exercises she’d been undertaking with J’onn, holding on as tightly as she could to her control. She could feel it slipping, however, and she could feel the molecules in the floor and walls vibrating with the tension of the power inside her.

 

“It’s a shame you don’t have a little more self-discipline, dear. If you had, you’d have been able to access these powers as a child, and we could have taken care of the Supers together, before they attracted all sorts of vermin to our planet. I was a little miffed that I couldn’t see your little girlfriend’s death in person, but I am forced to remain incognito for now, thanks to you,” Lillian said, her voice coming through the speaker, cold and clear. Lena’s heart clenched in pain, and she felt green fire shoot from her eyes and mouth as she screamed. The room in front of her set on fire, the Cadmus surgeons along with it, and Lena grabbed at her head, screaming in pain. She heard someone running behind her, feeling a familiar mind – _Alex_ – and then something hit her on the back of the head and she fell forward into the black.


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A small change of POV, and Lena's powers continue to increase, so much so that she finds someone she thought was lost.

* * *

Kara was dead. She remembered getting food with Lena at her favourite Chinese place, and then she got a call to go be Supergirl, and then she remembered flecks of green light mixed into black blood before she faded away into nothing.

 

So, she was dead, and that was okay. She’d already spent years straddling two worlds, Krypton and Earth. Stepping across into Rao’s light? That was nothing. She saw light; she saw Astra, and her mother, and her father, and Jor-El, and Lara Lor-Van, and her grandparents, and children she’d gone to school with, grown into strong adults now. They came to see her in groups, and she smiled at every one of them, not needing words, content in a way she hadn’t been since she left Krypton. She missed her friends. She missed Alex, and Kal, and Winn, and James, and Eliza. And _her_ , the one with eyes like Kryptonite. She missed her a lot. She smelled of home and warmth and everything right. But she would come along soon, because Rao’s light was everywhere, wasn’t it? Kara drifted happily and felt content.

 

Strangely, Rao’s light didn’t look the same. It wasn’t red, not anymore. But Kara supposed that Rao could change colours if he wanted. Who was she to judge? Love is love, she thought vaguely, smiling to herself.

 

Her parents began to look worried when they came to see her, as did Astra. Kara vaguely wondered where Non was, but she didn’t want to see him again, having visions on smoke-stained eyesockets and Kelly, her friend from… something with a feline?

 

Her spotty thoughts and inability to speak didn’t bother her, given that she was resting with her family and probably her ancestors in the halls of their god. But during the in-between times, when she was neither awake nor asleep, she kept seeing those green eyes, and it made something in her _pull_. It was… pain, Kara thought. She couldn’t feel anything else, but that? It had definitely hurt. She thought about the woman with green eyes, about the way one eyebrow raised itself in amusement, the way her lips were always painted perfectly, and she felt it again. Pain, pulling, tugging at a line that had to be attached to her heart. Why was she hurting, when she was at peace in Rao’s light?

 

She wasn’t hungry or thirsty. She felt nothing but happiness at seeing the people she loved. She could see her dead parents and her dead aunt and all of the people who she’d known as a child, grown and strong. Why was she worried about anything?

 

It was on the day when she woke to find a man dressed in healer’s robes checking her pupils that she realised what was truly happening. He nodded to himself in satisfaction, and then he said something to her, and then she had this horrible, choking, sick feeling.

 

Everything went black for a moment, but when she was able to see again, she sat up. She could smell vomit. Why would Rao keep vomit smells, of all things, in the glory of his halls? He was all powerful and this was her afterlife, her happiness, her reward for giving up her life for the people of Earth. Right?

 

“Little One,” Astra said, stepping into the room almost silently. She was wearing robes Kara had never seen before, gray and silver and blue. They were so pretty.

 

“Hi, Aunt Astra,” Kara said, her voice sounding croaky. How… why could she speak, now?

 

“How do you feel?” Astra asked, leaning down to kiss her on the head and then sitting by her bed, wrinkling her nose in distaste at the smell of vomit. Just then, a young man dressed in white came in and cleaned the vomit from the floor quickly and efficiently, as Kara watched in confusion.

 

“I’m… I don’t understand, Aunt Astra. Why was I sick?”

 

“Your physician took out the tube helping you breathe, my darling. You’ve been treated for Kryptonite poisoning. It took a month for it to fully filter out, and you’ve been in and out of consciousness since we found you.”

 

“What? No, this… I’m dead, aren’t I? I thought… I’m in Rao’s light. I felt my heart stop, Aunt Astra,” Kara said, brow furrowed in confusion.

 

“As did I, Little One. But here I sit,” Astra said, spreading her hands. “Rao may call us both to his light someday, but that time is not now.”

 

“I don’t understand, Aunt Astra. Where are we? What is this place? My mom is here, and my dad, and Uncle Jor and Aunt Lara. They’re all dead, and I saw you die, Astra. What happened?”

 

Astra stroked her hair soothingly.

 

“I’m sorry, Little One. This must be very confusing for you. You are not dead, and nor are those from Krypton who were in Argo City when the planet exploded. There was a failsafe that transported the city to an area of folded space, a sort of pocket in space-time. Similar to the Phantom Zone, but not. Time passes here, but slowly. The city and its population survived. It was an idea of your father’s, and he wasn’t sure it would work, and that is why your mother and father sent you and Kal-El to the humans,” Astra explained.

 

“But… how are you here, Aunt Astra?” Kara replied, brow creased up in confusion. “I saw you die. I heard your last breath. I said the funeral rites to send you home to Rao!”

 

“I… I didn’t know that, Little One,” Astra said, looking visibly touched. “I can barely believe that Non would allow you to do that, after everything.”

 

“He was reluctant, but… he knew you would want me to do it. He might have been a complete ass, but he was loyal to you, for the most part,” Kara said, trying not to think about how he’d looked when she burned his eyes out of his head.

 

“Perhaps you are right, Little One. In any case, my funeral pod passed through this section of space. What’s left of the council set up a series of beacons that would look for Kryptonian pods. When my pod was detected, Alura took control of it remotely and piloted it to Argo City. I did the same for you when your pod passed by. I was saved by the same means you were – blood transfusions from my family and treatment to filter out all of the Kryptonite from my cells, followed by slow exposure to yellow sunlight to revive me,” Astra explained. “It took me less time to wake, but I believe that’s because I was only stabbed once. Your exposure was much more serious, due to you having ingested such a lot of it, and because the Kryptonite was designed to leach out from your digestive system into every other system of your body. It was a clever way to kill one of us, I must admit,” Astra said, her eyes narrowing. “I would like to meet this human who was able to kill you, however temporarily, so that I can teach them the error of their ways,” Astra said, and for a moment she looked even more murderous than she had when she had been hell-bent on implementing Myriad on Earth.

 

“I think I’d like to take care of that myself,” Kara muttered, still trying to take it in. This was _real._ Her parents – her aunt – her entire _city,_ for Rao’s sake! They were alive! _She_ was alive!

 

“It will take a while to sink in, Little One,” Astra said, gently pushing a strand of hair back from Kara’s face. “I have not yet fully accepted it. I never expected to see my sister again, let alone the friends I grew up with, or my colleagues from my time in Krypton’s military. It took me months to speak our language fluently again,” Astra said, her eyes far away. Kara realised that they were speaking English, and not Kryptonian, as she had thought. Her perceptions were askew, probably as a result of whatever treatment she was having for the Kryptonite poisoning.

 

Just then, Alura and Zor-El walked into the room, looking anxious and eager.

 

“Mom? Dad?” Kara said, trembling as she realised that this was… her parents were _alive_ , and in front of her. She burst into tears as her parents ran forward, gathering her into a three-way hug. A large part of her couldn’t believe this was real, but another part was just… calm. She had to go through hell to get here, yes, but Kara Zor-El was finally home.

 

***

 

Lena woke slowly, her body feeling sluggish and weak. She moved a little, and groaned as she realised she had a headache. A really bad one.

 

“Lena? Are you awake?”

 

She knew that voice. It reminded her of… a picture formed in her mind, blue eyes and hair like sunlight. It made her heart hurt, for some reason. She pushed that to one side and focused on the voice again.

 

“Kara?” she asked, not knowing what the word meant.

 

“No,” the voice said, and now it sounded sad, too. “It’s me, Alex. Kara’s sister, remember?”

 

“Oh,” Lena said, feeling numb, suddenly. Kara was gone. Of course she was. “Where am I?”

 

“At the DEO. I know you probably feel a bit strange, and I’m sorry. But J’onn asked that you be kept under, at least a little, until we can get a handle on your powers,” Alex said, her voice low and soothing.

 

It all came back, then. The facility, her mother’s taunting, the lab fire.

 

“Shit,” she said, touching her eyelids with one hand. “Did I hurt anyone?”

 

Alex hesitated.

 

“None of our people were hurt. You destroyed a large section of the labs, though, and there were those two surgeons, and a few other Cadmus people we hadn’t picked up yet,” Alex said, apologetically.

 

“Oh. That’s… not ideal, but at least I didn’t hurt any of the DEO’s personnel,” Lena said. She opened her eyes slowly, taking in Alex’s surprised expression. “What?” she asked, confused.

 

“I’m just… a little surprised. You killed quite a few people,” Alex said. “Kara… she was never able to get over it, when someone died because she didn’t get there fast enough, or because she made a mistake, you know?”

 

“I’m not Kara,” Lena said, a little stiffly. “And I can’t really bring myself to mourn the loss of people who worked for Cadmus willingly.”

 

A shadow crossed Alex’s face, and Lena remembered that her father had worked for Cadmus for a long time before his disappearance. Not entirely willingly, but not entirely unwillingly, either.

 

“I’m sorry, Alex,” she said, reaching out to touch Alex’s hand gently. “I didn’t mean… your father, I know he wasn’t there because he wanted to be.”

 

Alex took a shaky breath and shook her head.

 

“You don’t have anything to apologise for. My father… maybe at first he really was doing the right thing, I don’t know. But by the time I saw him, saw what he had convinced Lillian to do with that damn Frigate… he wasn’t the man I thought he was. He was willing to sacrifice lives to protect Kara and me, and while I appreciate the sentiment, I would never stand for that. Exiling people to the other side of the galaxy for the sake of keeping me safe? That’s not something I would ever want, and neither would Kara.”

 

Lena nodded in agreement, wincing at the pain the movement brought with it.

 

“Oh. That reminds me,” Alex said, thoughtfully. She stood up and rummaged in a drawer for a long moment before coming up with a syringe and a vial of gold-coloured liquid.

 

“What’s that?” Lena asked, eyes narrowed against the brightness in the room.

 

“For the headaches,” Alex said, drawing a small amount of the liquid into the syringe and flicking it to disperse any air bubbles. “You game to try it?”

 

“Sure,” Lena said, shrugging. “Probably can’t hurt.”

 

It did hurt, for a few moments anyway. But then the tension and pain began to drain away, slowly at first, and then – blissfully - it was gone.

 

“Jesus, Alex,” Lena said, breathing a sigh of relief. “What was in that?”

 

“A little of this, a little of that,” Alex said, smiling. “I’ll talk you through the science later. For now, just be glad that it works.”

 

Lena nodded, offering a small smile.

 

“Now, we need to talk about control,” Alex said, her face suddenly serious. She sat on the chair next to Lena’s bed again. “I think it might be a good idea for you to go to the Fortress of Solitude. I know that you’re not Kryptonian, but I spoke to Clark and I think there are some mental exercises that Jor-El could teach you to help you control your powers.”

 

Lena held up one hand.

 

“I have… so many questions, about all of that. But my first is, the Fortress of whatitude?”

 

Alex laughed.

 

“I told him it was a dorky name,” she said, snorting. “When Kal-El – Superman – arrived on Earth, he was in a pod. Like the one we sent… anyway, there were some crystals in there, some that were for information, some that were for other purposes. One in particular was like a seed, sort of. It built a huge Fortress up in the Arctic somewhere – I don’t know exactly where – and Kal and… and Kara, they used it as a sort of home away from home. A piece of Krypton on Earth.”

 

“And Jor-El?”

 

“Kal-El’s father.”

 

“And he lives there?” Lena asked, with one eyebrow up.

 

“No,” Alex chuckled. “He left behind an AI. It knows everything he knows, or knew. He died with Krypton, I guess. Kara had one, too. Her mother, Alura. I can introduce you, if you want?”

 

Lena shook her head. “Not right now, Alex. I don’t think I could bear to… not without her. Not yet.”

 

Alex nodded in understanding.

 

When Lena was fully recovered from the incident at the Cadmus facility, Kal-El and J’onn flew with her and Alex to the Fortress. Kal-El had finally come round to the idea that Lena was not a murderous monster like the rest of her family, especially once he saw what she’d done to the Hoshin Frigate.

 

_1 month earlier_

 

_“You could tear my body apart, couldn’t you?” he’d asked, looking awed, as he took in the remains of the massive spacecraft._

_“I don’t know,” Lena said, using her inner sight to look at his molecular structure thoughtfully. “But I believe so, yes.”_

_“Rao,” Superman said, under his breath, swallowing. Lena felt a momentary sense of smugness. He was so used to being the most powerful being on Earth, and now he knew that if she chose, she could tear him limb from limb. Not that she would, but a little humility wouldn’t hurt him. And anyway, Kara had always been stronger than Superman._

 

Lena shook her head, clearing her thoughts, and they all landed softly outside the Fortress of Solitude. There was a huge key made from… she looked at it closely, her powers kicking in as she scanned it down to the molecular level. The core of a dwarf star, melted with Kryptonian heat vision. One million tonnes.

 

“May I?” she asked, as Superman went to pick it up.

 

“Sure,” Kal-El said, standing back.

 

Lena lifted the key with her mind, much more easily than she thought she would, and slotted it gently into the lock. The door opened, and Superman gave her a nod of respect as she guided the huge key back to the ground.

 

They entered the Fortress and Lena was stunned to see the huge space, filled with ice and crystals and two huge ice sculptures which she knew were of Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van, Superman’s parents. It was like a cathedral to Krypton.

 

She wondered how Kara had felt when she was here in the Fortress. Had it been a place of solace for her, or a painful reminder of everything she’d left behind?

 

The day that followed made Lena’s head spin. Jor-El, or his hologram, rather, looked like a real person, at least until she used her extra abilities to look at it. Then she saw the molecular structure of the holographic matrix, and was stunned by the intricacy of the technology. Krypton had been so far ahead of Earth. It was difficult to believe, really, that they had ended up destroying their planet. They really seemed to know enough to know better. But then, there were plenty of intelligent people on Earth, too, and still the population at large ignored the threat posed by climate change.

 

Jor-El taught her the beginnings of Torquasm-Vo, a mental and physical discipline that could be twinned with a Kryptonian martial art, Torquasm-Rao, at a later date. It helped a person learn control and strength. In Lena’s case, it should allow her to gain full control over her capabilities, no matter what her emotional state was at any given time. It could take months or even years, Jor-El cautioned her, for her to master even the basics of Torquasm-Vo. Some practitioners on Krypton had still considered themselves novices when they were over 100 years old.

 

The mental exercises made her feel better almost immediately. She had a headache from the exertion, but she felt more secure, more grounded.

 

They flew back to civilisation and Alex left her to her thoughts, and Lena went to take a bubble bath. It was rare for her to go to sleep this early, but she was exhausted.

 

_She slipped into a dream almost immediately, and the dream-place looked similar and different to the Fortress. It wasn’t the red-drenched landscape she’d expected, but she was in a room with Kara, Kara who looked surprisingly similar to how she’d looked before she died. She was wearing formal-looking robes and was sitting side by side with an older woman, a woman with black curling hair with a vivid white streak in it._

_“Little One, we have to think about going to the Daxamites. They have a planet, even if it is riddled with Kryptonite. There may be somewhere we can settle,” the older woman was saying, but her face was scrunched up in disgust at the thought._

_“We’re not going to Daxam, Aunt Astra. For a start, they tried to invade Earth and I killed their Queen and a lot of their people. And they blame Krypton for the destruction of their planet. At best, they’ll kill us all. At worst, they’ll torture and enslave us. I think we should go to Earth. There are a number of moons on nearby planets that I think we could survive on. And the yellow sun makes us unbelievably powerful, you know that. If we seed the moon with the right mixture of elements, we should be able to make the land habitable. We could start again, farm the land.  We have a seed bank here in Argo City, and DNA for every creature that ever lived on our planet. We could make a new Krypton and we could have Earth’s people as our allies.”_

_Astra looked at her thoughtfully._

_“You really have thought about this, haven’t you, Little One?” she murmured._

_Kara nodded._

_“Then I think it’s time we went to your mother with this.”_

_Kara’s mother, Alura Zor-El, was the leader of Argo City. She and her husband technically headed the council, but Zor-El was interested only in science. Alura had been in charge since they found themselves caught up in the space pocket Zor-El had used as a backup defence against the destruction of the planet. Lena, in her dream state, wasn’t sure of why she knew this, but she knew it was true. Alura was in charge, and she would agree with Kara’s scheme, because going to the Daxamites was a suicide mission._

 

When Lena woke, her face was streaming with tears, because Kara was _dead_. Her mind had created a dream, an elaborate story that had Kara at its heart. It was obviously a product of her grief, a way for her to process the loss of the woman she’d cared for more than anyone else. The illusion that Kara was alive cut her more than any knife ever could. She cried for an hour before she was able to get up.

 

The next days were filled with training, and Lena decided to leave her company in the capable hands of Jess, her assistant, while she gained more control over her abilities. Even as she was training to control them, her abilities were growing stronger and more complex. She could see the structure of everything around her on the atomic level. She could see through walls, through lead, through people. She could see in infrared, too. It all took thought and deliberation and experimentation, and Jor-El was helping her to discover what her limitations were. But the truth was that there weren’t many she’d discovered so far. If she could think it through, she could do it.

 

It was late one night when Jor-El opened the roof of the Fortress to have her look out into space and tell him how far she could see. She was, with some direction, able to find the ruined remains of Daxam still in orbit around the Kryptonian’s sun, Rao. Her dream came back to her, and she began to cry.

 

“What is it, young lady?” Jor-El asked, sounding impassive. His AI was a simulacrum of the person only, and had no emotion, but it did try to emulate it.

 

“I… I had a dream about Kara,” Lena said, once she was able to speak. She told Jor-El about what she’d dreamed, about seeing Kara with her aunt, Astra, discussing how they might find a new home. She told him what she had imagined in the dream, and the hologram frowned.

 

“Did you call this…folded space?” he asked, his form flickering as he called up more information from the crystals in front of him.

 

“Yes,” Lena said. “I don’t know what it means, but that’s how they survived when Krypton died. In the dream. I know it’s not real, but seeing Rao and Daxam up there, it just… brought it all back. I miss her so much,” she said, crying into her hands quietly. Jor-El was silent behind her.

 

“I have found a record of the research you describe,” Jor-El said, after a few minutes of silence from him.

 

“What?” Lena asked, startled.

 

“I have found archived records of my brother’s. Kara’s father, Zor-El. He did attempt just such a failsafe, a way to save his family and their city, at least, if the worst should happen to Krypton,” Jor-El intoned.

 

“And is it possible that it might have worked?” Lena asked, eyes widening.

 

“It is,” Jor-El said, after a pause. “There are a number of sections of so-called folded space that might meet the needs of such an undertaking. My thought is that they would have chosen this one,” he said, scratching his nose absently. It was gestures like that which made him seem real, rather than a hologram.

 

He called up a star map of the space between Earth and Krypton, zeroing in on an area about 2/3rds of the way to Krypton.

 

“There is a pocket of folded space here that could have held all of Krypton, had Zor-El found a way to do so. Time does not pass there in the same way that it does on Earth. They would have aged at around a quarter of the rate, and if their supplies were sufficient, it is feasible that they could have survived.”

 

“What is the probability that I would have dreamed up a possibility like this all by myself?” Lena asked.

 

“Next to zero,” Zor-El said, after a pause. “It is one thing to have a dream that brings back a lost love, but the specifics of this dream are such that I believe it more likely to be some sort of psychic event.”

 

_Jesus._ What the fuck had happened to her? She could deal with the physical stuff, the flying, seeing through walls, manipulating matter. But this psychic stuff, the mind-reading - that had freaked her out from the beginning. And now she was – what? Seeing the future? Reading someone’s mind from 18 light years away? 

Jor-El didn’t know what was next, and neither did Lena, so she left the Fortress, flying back to National City and landing near Alex’s apartment. She didn’t know for sure that Kara was alive, but as Jor-El had said, the chances of her coming up with an idea like that on her own were virtually zero.

 

“Lena?” Alex answered the door wearing shorts and a tank top, Maggie Sawyer lounging in pyjamas on the couch behind her.

 

“Can I come in?” Lena asked.

 

“Of course,” Alex said, frowning. She stood back, letting Lena step through the door. “Can I get you a drink?”

 

“Please. Anything alcoholic,” Lena said gratefully.

 

Alex poured her a generous portion of Scotch and ushered her to sit down next to a confused-looking Maggie.  


“What’s going on, Luthor? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Maggie said, concerned.

 

Lena shuddered.

 

“Shit, Lena. What the hell is it?” Alex asked.

 

“I don’t even know how to say it,” Lena said, trembling.

 

“Just, tell me?” Alex asked, eyes wide and uncertain. She took Lena’s hand, and then she gasped.

 

Images flashed through Lena’s mind – her dream about Kara and Astra, her talk with Jor-El, her vision, looking out at Rao and Daxam, and the possibility of a pocket in space housing millions of Kryptonian survivors. She felt like she was in a trance, and she couldn’t move. She jumped when cold water hit her in the face.

 

She looked around, startled, seeing Alex half-slumped against Maggie, who’d obviously just thrown the water at Lena.

 

“What the hell was that, Luthor?” Maggie asked, angry and scared.

 

“I don’t know,” Lena said, hands trembling. She tried to bring the glass of Scotch to her mouth, but it shook too much, so she gave up.

 

Alex sat up a little straighter, then, eyes flickering open.

 

“Shit, Lena. Would you please give me some fucking notice before you do something like that again?” Alex said, rubbing her head.

 

“I would if I’d known I was going to, or even what I did,” Lena said, looking at Alex in concern.

 

“I’m fine,” Alex said, waving her off. “I just… that was a lot of information at once.”

 

“You saw that? The stuff I was thinking about?” Lena asked, incredulous.

 

“Yeah,” Alex said, wincing. “Do you really think it’s possible, Lena?” she asked plaintively.

 

“According to Jor-El, it’s much more likely than it not being true,” Lena said, shrugging. She didn’t know how to process the information herself, let alone try to comfort or explain any of this to Alex.

 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Alex said, and then she was crying. She lurched forward into Lena’s arms, and they cried into each other’s shoulders. Kara might be alive.

 

“Would someone please tell me what the fuck is going on here?” Maggie’s voice cut in through their tears. “And don’t even _think_ about touching me, Luthor.”

 

Lena sniffed, laughing, and she let Alex go so that she could explain Lena’s dream and Jor-El’s revelation. A few minutes later, they were all crying, but Lena felt lighter than she’d felt in months, because Kara could be alive, and that would mean… _everything_.


	4. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara talks to her mother and aunt about Lena, and the Kryptonians make a decision about their next move. Lena helps out at the DEO and later, goes to see her brother. She begins to use her powers in ways that others might not agree with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a note of warning, here. I had forgotten to tag this fic for reasons that will become clear towards the end of this chapter. Lena uses her powers to actively harm others, in a way that someone as pure as Kara might not necessarily agree with. If that seems like it’s going to be a problem for you, then please feel free not to continue. I will add some tags as a warning for those starting this fic. Thank you all for reading.

* * *

Kara woke up late, after a long night of talking to her mother and the rest of the council about her idea. Earth had been her home for 13 years, and she believed that it was more than likely that they would agree to her offer to share technology and protection in return for a place in their solar system. Of course there were the White Martians to consider, but they had mostly kept to themselves since they destroyed the Green Martians (almost) down to the last man. And if it came to a war, she was confident that the Kryptonians, with their advanced technology and their incredible strength under a yellow sun, would be the victors.

 

Kara wrapped herself up in robes that her mother had ordered to be made for her. They were made from her old clothing. It felt strange to wear clothes that were so similar to those she’d worn on Krypton, and to speak her first language to people other than Kal-El. His grasp on _Kryptahniuo_ was tenuous at best, and his accent… well. It was almost indescribable, the strange mixture of Kansas and Krypton on his tongue. He was human, a human with a Kryptonian body. She was the one who’d always been the true alien, and his unease with her existence had only ever underlined that. Being with him should have been a way to feel comfort, to be with someone who was the same as her. But he wasn’t. He was more alien to her than any of the humans she’d met, because he was supposed to be her cousin.

 

Kara wondered how Jor-El and Lara would react to seeing Kal again. When they saw him last he’d been a gurgling infant. Now he was a grown man – a grown human. He hadn’t studied science; he was a _journalist_ , of all things. What would they think of that? What would they think of his choice of mate?

 

Kara shivered a little. They were a little too far from any yellow sun here for her powers to be active, and they had to keep the power levels extremely low to sustain the entire city, which meant that the climate settings were lower than most would prefer. They were living on borrowed time, now, and the decision on where they should move had to be made soon.

 

_“Are you sure we shouldn’t approach the Daxamites?” one old man on the council had asked, the day before._

_“I am,” Kara nodded. “Not only did I kill their Queen, but I killed hundreds of other Daxamites, if not thousands, when I seeded Earth’s atmosphere with lead. They are definitely not fans of mine, and they really, really hate Kryptonians. Especially since the death of our planet essentially doomed theirs. And even if all that weren’t true, the remains of Krypton – the_ toxic _remains – are riddled throughout Daxam. Their Queen bled Green Kryptonite. She infected Kal-El with Silver Kryptonite, and he almost killed me. There are so many dangerous substances on the planet that I honestly don’t think we’d last a month, even if they did welcome us with open arms,” Kara said, wearily. This wasn’t the first time she’d explained this to short, fat and entitled over there. Lena would have cut him off at the knees if he’d approached her with that tone. She had to bite back a grin at that thought. She missed Lena so much, it was like she’d lost a limb._

 

She made her way to the small dining hall she shared with the rest of the El family. Her mother and Astra were both there.

 

“Good morning,” she said, automatically, filling her cup with some sweetened _kaf_. It was similar to coffee, but also to chocolate. They used to mix it with milk from a nut tree that was… what was it called?  In any case, while they had a seed bank, the tree was currently extinct, along with the rest of Krypton.

 

She sat down to eat a simple unleavened bread with a paste on it that she could pretend was Nutella if she didn’t think about it too much. It was actually made from the ground up remains of a Kryptonian firefly, but if she thought about that too much, she’d be eating a lot less.

 

“Are you well this morning, Little One?” Astra asked, stroking Kara’s face gently.

 

“I am… I am fine,” Kara said.

 

Astra raised an eyebrow.

 

“Perhaps fine is not the correct word,” Kara said, shrugging.

 

“Then what is?” Astra asked. Alura came to sit on Kara’s other side, pulling her daughter close.

 

“You can tell us anything, Little One,” she said, kissing Kara’s head.

 

“I… I miss my friends, and my Earth family,” Kara admitted. “In truth, I miss one more than the rest.”

 

“Your friend who made the machine to send away the Daxamites?” Astra guessed.

 

“Yes,” Kara said, startled. “How did you know?”

 

“You speak of her a lot. She is important to you.”

 

“Yes. She… she was there for me when most of my friends and family were not,” Kara said, shrugging.

 

“After the Daxamite left?” Astra asked, one eyebrow up.

 

“Yes,” Kara answered, puzzled. “Why did you say it like that?”

 

“The Daxamite was not good for you, Kara. He told you that you were selfish and that your good works for the humans were for your own benefit. He treated you terribly and, had I been there, I would have crushed him,” Astra said, her teeth grinding together.

 

Kara was startled. He… he hadn’t been that bad. It was… those things he said, they were, like, teething problems, right? While he was getting used to Earth and how everything worked. After that, he had mostly been sweet. So maybe he didn’t exactly ‘get’ her, what with him suggesting that they run away together instead of fighting off the invasion, or when he said that Clark should be Earth’s champion and not her. He wasn’t what you might call supportive.

 

_“You, Kara Danvers, are my hero.”_

 

Kara blinked. Lena had always been amazing, right from day one. She hadn’t expected anything from Kara in return, and anytime that Kara had helped her, in her human guise or as Supergirl, it was as if Kara had done the most amazing thing in the world. Lena had always been grateful for her friendship and she tried to support Kara the same way Kara supported her. The last night that Kara spent on Earth was spent with Lena Luthor. And even though that meal had been the cause of her death, she didn’t regret it. She had loved every moment she spent with Lena.

 

“You care for the scientist, Little One, whether you realise it or not. If things work out as you suggest, we will see you bonded to her, if she is agreeable. Perhaps not in Rao’s light, but Sol’s light will be witness enough. You need a strong person to stand by your side, and it sounds as if this woman is the one.”

 

Kara stared at her mother.

 

“You think… you believe that I have romantic feelings for Lena?” Kara asked.

 

“I do,” Alura said, with a tiny quirk of her lips. “I remember when you had a crush on Sab-Izs, and your eyes would light up when you gazed upon her. I see that same look in your eye now, but it is the look of a woman in love, Kara. Your Lena, she is intelligent enough to turn back the Daxamites and to excel despite the actions of her family. She sounds like a match for you, the sun of my life,” Alura finished, eyes soft.

 

Kara smiled, but her eyes were tearing up. Her mother… she thought Lena was a good match for Kara? It could be… she had never even thought about it, never considered it an option. They were friends.

 

“Is it a problem for you, Little One, that Lena is a female human? I had heard that such prejudices existed on Earth, but I never expected you to be afflicted with such ideas,” Astra asked, frowning.

 

“No, that is not it. Or perhaps it is? What I mean is, I am not prejudiced in that way, but I never thought of Lena like that. She is so accomplished and strong and pretty, and her ex-boyfriend – he was tall, and bearded, and so handsome, and I just… I would never have thought of myself as competition for someone like him. I thought she was straight? Heterosexual?”

 

Kara shook her head, confused, and Astra pulled her into a side-hug.

 

“No-one is truly 100% one way or the other, as far as I understand it,” Astra said, squeezing Kara tightly. It felt so _good_ to truly feel something, to feel someone’s touch. “If she is not interested in you, I would be most surprised, Little One. Did she not send you blooms? Is that not a sign of romantic interest between humans?”

 

“Blooms? Oh, you mean flowers,” Kara said, chewing on her thumbnail thoughtfully. “I understand. It can be seen that way, definitely. I think… it is called heteronormativity on Earth. That people are enmeshed in this idea of heterosexuality being the default, and anything else being strange or deviant. I see that I have been pulled into that idea, too,” Kara said.

 

“I think perhaps you have, Little One,” Alura said, kissing Kara’s temple. “Think about it, my dear one. You will have plenty of time on our journey to Earth.”

 

“What?” Kara asked, head whipping round. “The council agreed?”

 

“Yes,” Alura said, smiling. “They did, and it was because of your testimony regarding the Daxamites and the humans. If we are to find a home, it is clear that it is much more likely to be with the latter.”

 

Kara thanked Rao gratefully as she was crushed in a three-way hug with her aunt and mother. Whatever happened with Earth, she had found her family again, and she prayed that no-one would take them away from her again.

 

After a long day spent on design specs for building the ships they would need to make it to the Sol system, Kara went to sleep, wrapped up in her childhood bed, and as she did every night, she dreamt of Lena. This time, however, was different. It wasn’t a memory of their time together, or a dream of them watching a movie together or of catching Lena after she fell off a balcony. It felt more… real.

 

_“You really think we can find them?” Alex asked, as Winn typed furiously into his computer at the DEO. Lena was standing next to her, chewing on her thumbnail, and she was wearing – tactical gear?_

_“I think it’s possible,” Winn said. “We know where the pocket of space is, more or less, thanks to Jor-El. All we have to do is find the right frequency for the places where space and sub-space cross.”_

_Lena nodded, and she and Alex shared a look. It was hope, and trepidation, and… was that fondness? Kara’s heart warmed. She always knew that Alex and Lena would get along if they ever got to know each other._

_“We might find her,” Lena breathed._

_“Yeah,” Alex said, nodding._

_An alarm started going off inside the DEO, and Alex sighed, calling something up on a tablet in her hand._

_“Lena, that’s that K’hund again. She’s managed to get out of her cell. Could you stick her back in there and maybe reinforce it a little?” Alex asked._

_“Sure,” Lena said, absently, and then she flew out of sight, almost as fast as Kara could have. Kara followed her, finding her opening the door of one of the DEO’s detention cells. An enraged K’Hund stood on the other side, the remains of her cell in her huge hands. Kara’s heart almost stopped. Lena was going to get herself killed! What was happening?_

_The K’Hund roared, and Lena rolled her eyes._

_“Are we really going to do this again, Ter’zsa?” she asked, hands on hips._

_The K’Hund growled in response, but she seemed… frightened?_

_“You have two choices,” Lena said, holding up two fingers. “One, I put your pretty face through that wall and embed you in it until you can behave yourself.”_

_The K’Hund made a small grunt._

_“Two – you stand back while I clean this mess up, and you get back into your newly reinforced cell when I tell you. Now, what do you think?” Lena asked. She was tapping one foot on the floor impatiently._

_“Ter’zsa behave.”_

_“Good girl,” Lena said, with a bright smile. The K’Hund put the remains of the cell down on the floor carefully, backing away. The debris in the room suddenly began to swirl around, and then it was forming itself into pieces, and then… the cell was intact, a huge hexagonal glass cage built into concrete at the head and foot. Lena concentrated, and her eyes flashed bright green, and the concrete re-formed into a substance that Kara didn’t quite recognise, but that looked familiar._

_“Now, darling, could you get back in there for me?” Lena asked, in her sweetest voice. The K’Hund gave Lena a look that could have been a smile before making her way reluctantly back into the cell._

_“Do you want to tell me what’s upsetting you, Ter’zsa?” Lena asked, one hand on her hip._

_“Ter’zsa frowned, then pointed at her head._

_“You want me to read you?” Lena asked._

_Ter’zsa nodded. Lena’s eyes flashed green again, and then she nodded._

_“I see. I don’t think we have those exact things here on Earth,” Lena said, reddening a little. “But I will find something to help you out, darling, okay? Us girls have to stick together.”_

_Ter’zsa definitely smiled, then, and on a face like hers it was terrifying. But Lena just nodded at her and left._

_“All fixed,” Lena said, as she landed quietly next to Alex._

_“Cool. Thanks, Lee. What was her deal?”_

_Lena leaned over and whispered something in Alex’s ear, and the two women giggled for a minute._

_“I’ll put something together for her. I didn’t know they went into heat!” Alex said, snort-laughing._

_“Well, girls have to help each other out, am I right?” Lena said again, laughing into her hand._

_“You’re getting really good at that, you know,” Alex said, nodding at the tablet. There was a video feed of the K’Hund in her cell on the screen._

_“It’s taken a lot of time. I’m so glad Kal-El agreed to let me use the Fortress. I mean, the new DEO facility is great for practising the use of my powers, but the stuff he’s taught me – Torquasm-Vo – it’s been much more helpful. I haven’t had an episode in months.”_

_“I know. Congrats, Luthor. Kara will be so proud,” Alex said, smiling widely._

_“I hope I get to find out,” Lena said, smiling sadly._

_“Me too,” Alex said._

_“You think she knows we’re waiting for her?” Lena asked, looking up at one of the star maps the DEO kept onscreen all the time._

_“I don’t know. But hopefully she’s fine and trying to find a way to get here,” Alex said, sighing. “I miss her.”_

_“Me too,” Lena said wistfully. “I never got to…”_

_She reddened, looking away._

_“You can tell her when she gets here,” Alex said, gripping Lena’s upper arm. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty sure she was starting to feel the same, before all of this.”_

_“Hmm,” Lena said, doubtfully. She pasted on one of her ‘CEO’ smiles. “I should get back to the Fortress. Miles to go before I sleep, and all that. You guys will let me know if you get anything from the scans, or if you need me for anything?”_

_“Of course,” Alex said, and Winn nodded, too. Lena was gone, then, in a burst of displaced air._

_“She’s got it baaaaad!” Winn crowed, and he and Alex shared a fist-bump._

_“She sure does.”_

_“Do you really think that? About Kara, I mean?” Winn asked._

_“Yeah, I really do. I mean, Kara was…_ **is** _a little dumb, when it comes to someone liking her. But I think she was falling in love with Lena and she just didn’t know,” Alex replied._

_“Me too,” Winn said, thoughtfully, before opening several new windows on his multiple screens and typing rapidly. Alex turned to another monitor before wandering away, and Kara drifted away, too, her mind taking her deeper into sleep._

Kara didn’t think anything of her dream the next day, other than that she wished it were true. If it was, it meant that someone with superpowers was still taking care of National City. And it meant that Lena might love her, which was an amazing thing to contemplate. It was more than likely to be a product of her own mind, however, wanting to make sense of the things she had spoken to her mother and Astra about the day before. She sent a prayer to Rao that he would watch over National City and over her friends and family specifically, because she couldn’t be there. Maybe someday soon they would be preparing their new ships to take them to Earth and their possible new home, and she could see how her friends and family were with her own two eyes.

 

“Rao’s will be done,” she prayed, before heading back to her father’s lab to work on their new ships.

 

***

 

Lena was about to see Lex for the first time since she had developed powers. She didn’t know if he knew about them or not. He probably did, though, especially given that her mother did. She nodded at the guard, who sneered at her, and she rolled her eyes. None of what her family had done was her fault, and she was tired of apologising for their actions, actions over which she had never had any control.

 

She stepped into the cell and the door clanged shut behind her. Lex was sitting on a chair at a table, as usual, chained to the floor and to the table. He looked… smug.

 

“Hello, sister. What a pleasure it is to see you again,” he said, smiling broadly.

 

“Likewise,” Lena said. And she meant it. She listened to the thudding of his heart, the sound giving away his excitement. Excitement, not fear. _Ah._ She reached out with her mind, finding the room surrounded. She could see them all. Men in tac gear were surrounding the room – surrounding her - with what looked to be tranquiliser rifles. Was that… Kryptonite? Did they really think that she was susceptible to it? Like that wasn’t the first thing they’d tested? She sat down, clenching something tightly in her mind, and the guns disintegrated into dust.

 

“Ah, that’s better,” she said, smiling at Lex. “You’re looking well,” she commented.

 

He smiled back at her, and then frowned uncertainly. Lena concentrated, finding an earbud in his right ear.

 

“… gone, sir. The guns are… dust.”

 

“Get in here and take her down, then,” Lex said, teeth bared.

 

Lena laughed, and with a twist of her mind, knocked all of her would-be attackers unconscious. She’d seen Kara flick someone on the forehead once to take them down, and it had stayed with her. So she did the telekinetic equivalent.

 

“Sorry, Lex. Were you expecting someone else?” she asked, crossing her arms and leaning back in her chair.

 

“I don’t know… what _are_ you, sister dear? Did our resident Kryptonian infect you with something when you were fucking her?” Lex asked, hissing the words out, venom dripping from every word. This was who he really was, she realised. The boy she’d known was long dead.

 

“If you really knew anything, Lex, you’d know that I never slept with Supergirl. Nor did she share her powers with me. According to the records I’ve found, you’re the one who made me like this. Tess Mercer, Cadmus, a kryptonite growth ray? Any of that ringing a bell in that great big shiny dome you call a head?” she asked, mockingly.

 

His eyes widened.

 

“It worked?” he asked, voice high with disbelief.

 

“Apparently so. It only took the murder of my best friend to bring it to the fore. Bravo,” Lena said, giving him a round of applause.

 

Lex’s eyes began to move around as he thought about the implications of her transformation.

 

“We thought… the glass, the telekinesis – we thought it was a temporary thing, because it wouldn’t work after your brain stopped swelling. Clearly you needed more stress, not less…” he broke off, thinking, and Lena smiled. She concentrated on his brain, on the cellular level, and she began, very carefully, to scrape away at the side of one of the blood vessels there. It would look like damage from stress, when it went. A huge aneurysm.

 

“You know, Lex, it’s been fun. But I’m going to have to take my leave,” she said, smiling at him. “Thanks – it’s been great.”

 

He was still muttering to himself and he looked like a madman. Lena shook her head. It was so sad that such a brilliant mind was wasted on this sort of insanity.  

 

She turned her back, leaving him muttering to himself, and she stepped over the bodies of the unconscious men outside. When she reached her car, she made a call to Maggie, who confirmed that she would send a bunch of uniforms to pick up the unconscious men, some of whom had been wearing guard uniforms.

 

She spent the rest of the journey back to L-Corp concentrating on taking apart the side wall of the artery inside Lex’s brain, making it look like the wear from stress, and she smiled as she realised that he’d caused the very thing that would destroy him. He had killed Kara, him and her mother, and she was going to make sure that they were unable to do it again, even if she had to find and kill every single member of Cadmus herself.

 

Her dream that night was peaceful. Kara was bathing, in a thick, viscous fluid that was a golden colour. She looked more relaxed than she ever had since Lena had met her. It made Lena smile.

 

“ _:Zrhuiaeo_ ,” Kara murmured. “ _Lena-te._ ”

 

Lena didn’t speak _Kryptahniuo_ , but the contact with Kara’s mind meant she didn’t have to. Kara was calling Lena hers. _Lena-te_ – my Lena. And _:zrhuiaeo_ – lovely, or beautiful.

 

“I love you, Kara Zor-El,” Lena murmured, and she was startled when Kara jumped, sitting up in the bath and exposing herself to the air.

 

“Lena?”

 

“Kara? Can you hear me?” Lena asked, but the picture was starting to fade, and Kara was disappearing, so Lena just whispered it again. _“I love you, Kara Zor-El.”_


	5. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena has an encounter with her mother, and it does not go Lillian's way. Kara and the Kryptonians work together on ships to take them to Earth.

* * *

The ships were halfway to completion. The designs were based on schematics from another age, given that Krypton had become quite isolationist after one of their scientists had gone crazy and destroyed one of their moons. Space travel was outlawed for a time. Kara had done most of the design for the ships, incorporating features she had noticed on the Daxamite ships, including the transmatter portals. Her father and her uncle already had several schematics for those, and they would need them for when they finally transported to their new home, wherever that might be. They had the materials for enough ships, and enough food and other supplies to last the journey, and a few more months after, if things did not go their way. But Kara was convinced that she could persuade the President of the US to allow them to settle on one of Jupiter or Saturn’s moons, and the rest of the world would likely follow President Marsdin’s lead. It wasn’t as if the humans had the technology to stop them, but she wouldn’t allow her people to force the matter. If Earth was opposed to their settling nearby, then they would find an uninhabited, unclaimed star system. At the very least, they should be able to barter with Earth for supplies for their onward journey.

 

Kara hadn’t heard Lena’s voice again since that night when she’d been in her bath, tired from a full day in the shipyards. Since the designs were finalised, she and her family had all pitched in, working on the components together from dawn until dusk. Which were relative terms, given that they were living in an artificial city hidden inside a fold in space, and their light was artificial, too. Kara hadn’t heard Lena’s voice again, but she had known, within those few seconds, that it _was_ Lena. She could feel Lena’s calm presence; she could almost smell the amazing perfume she always wore.

 

She had come to accept, during the long days of building and working with her hands, that she loved Lena, and as more than a friend. _Stupid heteronormativity._ She wasn’t sure that Lena loved her, or at least in the same way, but she planned on asking her as soon as they reached Earth. What did she have to lose, really? She’d already died, and it hadn’t stuck. Now Rao had given her back some of her people, so why not try to find love?

 

Astra had introduced her to a woman, not long after her resurrection. Her name was Jennai Al-Zar and she was Astra’s first love, from long before Non had ever come on the scene. (Kara didn’t like to think of Astra and Non together – her uncle had been a repugnant example of a Kryptonian.) Jennai was a petite woman, her eyes dark and shrewd, and she clearly loved Astra dearly. Astra’s eyes softened every time she looked at the tiny woman, who was no bigger than Lucy Lane, and it made Kara’s heart sing to see her aunt so happy. She had briefly hoped, seeing how Alex and Astra had reacted to one another, that they might find each other. But unfortunately fate, or perhaps Rao, had other plans. But Astra was happy, now, and so was Alex – or at least Kara hoped she was, still. She hadn’t had any dreams since the night she heard Lena speak to her, but she still had an idea that Lena was alive and well. Alex, she couldn’t be sure about.

 

She worked herself into exhaustion that day, having dinner with her extended family, including her grandfather, Yar-El, and her grandmother, Charys. They were charming company, and they loved to tell Kara of the days before Krypton’s core was overmined, before so much of the planet had turned toxic, before so much of the life on the planet had died out. She loved to talk with them, and once they had heard from Astra that she had someone that she cared for back on Earth, they teased her relentlessly.

 

“You would choose an Earth woman as your mate, of course,” Charys teased, tickling Kara’s ribs. Her ribs were her Kryptonite here. “None of our people would be good enough for you, the champion of

worlds.”

 

“She had better be worthy of you, my little _lumir_ ,” her grandfather joined in. “If she is not, I will have my sons send her to the other side of the galaxy.”

 

“ _Khehthgr_ , Dad wouldn’t do that, not even for you,” Kara said, laughing. “Plus, if he could transport us across the galaxy, we wouldn’t need to build these ships to get us to Earth, would he.”

 

“Details,” her grandfather said, mock-frowning at her. His eyes were cloudy, but he was sharp as ever. In Earth years, he was probably close to 150, now, but the last 37 of those years had been spent inside the pocket of folded space. Time did not move at the same pace, there.

 

“You know what they say about details, _khehthgr_ ,” she said, smiling as she finished the last mouthful of her food. They ate primarily vegetarian food, with a few other staples added in to keep their vitamin levels high. She rarely felt hungry, here. It was… odd.

 

“You are our deepest joy, you know,” her grandmother said, suddenly. It was a serious moment, suddenly, and Kara wasn’t ready for it.

 

“You have all of Argo City, here,” Kara said. “You have all survived here this long. I don’t believe I deserve that title.”

 

“You were gone, my sweetest girl, and now you are home, and you may very well be the reason we gain a new home. Do not cut yourself down for the benefit of others, Kara Zor-El,” her grandmother said sternly.

 

Kara blushed, looking at her lap. It was somehow too much to think that her family would be proud of her. She had been alone for so long, and her people on Earth were wonderful, but being the last of her people – it was a burden. One she never thought she’d be able to put down.

 

“I hope to be worthy of your regard someday, grandmother,” she said. Her grandmother hugged her close, and Astra and Alura smiled at her from across the room. Her father, as always, was absorbed in the intricacies of the ships and planning their journey. Alura was checking on him, every now and then, and wiping his chin when he missed his mouth a little with his food. All of these years hadn’t changed him at all. Kara smiled. She truly was home. Now she needed to bring her two homes together. Earth and Krypton, in one system, and the means to travel between their planets. It would be a dream come true.

 

“Please, Rao, let it be done,” she prayed, as she looked out at her family surrounding her. “Please, let me bring them together. I love them all so much.”

 

Rao did not answer, but Kara felt hope swell in her heart, nonetheless.

 

***

 

Lena had been expecting a visit from Lillian ever since her visit with Lex. She wasn’t sure how they kept in touch with one another, but she was planning to read Lillian’s mind if she could. Her mother was cold, but she had emotions, she just didn’t show them. Lex’s mind had been a maelstrom of madness, and she’d known from the beginning that she wouldn’t be able to read anything useful from it.

 

It was no surprise when ‘Cyborg Superman’ crashed into the middle of the road in front of her driver as she was on her way back from the DEO at around midnight, a week or so after her visit to Lex. Lena left the paperwork she was working on behind and stepped out of the car immediately, pushing Thomas back into his seat as he tried to get out to help her.

 

“Stay here, and contact Agent Danvers once we’re gone,” Lena said. Thomas nodded, white-faced. Lena held up one hand to Hank Henshaw.

 

“I’ll come with you. No need for violence,” she said.

 

“Fine,” he ground out, in his stupid voice. He grasped her around the upper arms and flew off. At first his grip was painful but Lena concentrated, creating a small field between her skin and his hands so that he was still holding her but wasn’t crushing her. The idiot never noticed the difference.

 

They landed in a nondescript area of National City, filled with warehouses and run-down houses. For once, she wished that her mother could choose somewhere a little more classy for these rendezvous.

 

“Hello, dear,” Lillian said. She was standing, elegant as ever, by a control panel for some sort of huge device.

 

“Mother,” Lena said, impassively. She stepped away from Hank Henshaw in distaste. He smelled like a sweaty cut of meat.

 

“You’ve been busy, darling,” Lillian said, turning to face Lena. She looked impassive as ever, but there was a tinge of worry to her expression.

 

“I have,” Lena said.

 

“Is this how it’s going to be, Lena? Like pulling teeth? Because I can have Hank here break a few bones if it helps,” Lillian said, sounding bored.

 

Lena focused her hearing, and she noted that her mother’s heart was thumping. She was nervous. Suddenly Lena felt a lot better. As agreed with Alex if she should ever be captured by Lena, she found the local electricity grid and switched it on and off twice, once on either side of the building in which she was being ‘held’. She would repeat the signal once every half hour until she was released or rescued. Or escaped.

 

“Mother, please don’t waste my time making empty threats,” Lena said. She slowed her breathing, using the techniques she’d learned from Jor-El, and she found the calmest place inside her, the centre of her being. She would not lose control again. Next time she took a human life, she would do it on purpose.

 

“My threats are never empty, darling,” Lillian drawled. “Your little friend Kara might have noticed that.”

 

“You killed someone I loved, Lillian,” Lena said, coldly. “I have hardly forgotten. Now, what’s all this about?” she asked, gesturing at the filthy warehouse and the control panel.

 

“I’m about to send Cyborg Superman to Metropolis, Lena, and I want you to stay and enjoy the show,” Lillian said, sneering. “Lois Lane is about to pay for her traitorous union with that alien she loves so much.”

 

She nodded at Hank, who tried to stab Lena in the neck with a syringe, presumably to sedate her. Lena had been expecting it, however, and she caught his arm with her mind effortlessly.

 

“I thought you said you were strong enough, Hank!” Lillian hissed.

 

“I am,” he growled. Lena rolled her eyes and then pretended to struggle, letting his arm go, and the needle sank into her neck. She focused on that area of her body and boiled the liquid away before it could get into her bloodstream, but she played along, slumping back into cyborg-Hank’s arms.

 

“Well done, old friend,” Lillian said, warmly. “Secure her over there, where she can watch the show. Do you have the Kryptonite sword?”

 

“I do,” Henshaw growled.

 

“Good. Time for Superman to die,” Lillian said, sneering. “There’s no way he won’t come for Lois Lane.”

 

Hank dragged Lena to a chair, securing her with handcuffs. She used Lillian’s triumph as a route into her mind, following along to her plan. For all of Lillian’s big talk, her plans were always fairly simple and seemed to involve finding the Super’s human weaknesses and using them against the heroes. It might have worked with Kara – albeit briefly – but it wouldn’t work with Kal. Lena wouldn’t allow it.

 

Lillian’s future plans involved an atrocity against humans in National City, something that could be blamed on the Green Martian. She had a shapeshifter trapped in a Cadmus lab who would do anything for a certain chemical compound, and he would imitate the Green Martian if that’s what Lillian asked. Lena carefully noted the location of the lab, and then rummaged around until she found information she could use to take down Cadmus. She found that Lillian had a secret safe in a hidden room underneath the Luthor mansion, and the safe contained a list of prominent people who were happy to donate to Cadmus, along with a full list of all of its employees. She also noted that Jeremiah Danvers was currently being held in an offshore black site, having his mind reprogrammed. Lena sighed. It would take months to undo that damage.

 

“It’s time, Cyborg Superman,” Lillian said triumphantly, unaware of Lena’s invasion of her mind. “Take him down, for me.”

 

To Lena’s horror, Hank Henshaw stepped close to her mother, kissing her. It was all Lena could do not to vomit in her own mouth. She dissolved her handcuffs with a thought and stood, stretching her neck.

 

“That’s quite enough of that,” Lena said. She searched through Cyborg Superman’s wiring with a thought, finding the right place to cut off his CPU. He came to a halt, lips pursed hilariously. Lillian stepped back with a gasp.

 

“How did you do that?!” she asked, stunned.

 

“A little present from my mom and brother,” Lena said, smiling. Lillian started to run, and Lena watched her impassively for a moment before lifting her bodily with her powers, dragging Lillian to the chair she’d been attached to a moment before. She concentrated, and a coiled rope from the other side of the room was suddenly binding Lillian Luthor to her chair. “You know, Mom, I always thought you were ten steps ahead of me, but it turns out, that’s just not true,” Lena said, shaking her head. “Your ideas are all so… prosaic. Ordinary. You really got lucky, with Kara. She was such a trusting soul. I’m not. Not anymore.”

 

Lena pulled her mother’s cellphone from her pocket, watching as a wide-eyed Lillian stared at the floating device.

 

“Sorry, mom. I have to take this.”

 

Lena called Alex, and was pleased when the woman answered on the first ring.

 

“Lillian Luthor, if you’ve harmed a hair on that girl’s head…”

 

“Alex, it’s me,” Lena said, smiling. It was nice to have someone caring for her. “I have Lillian and cyborg what’s his name here, ready to be picked up. Did you get my signal?”

 

“Thank Rao, Lena,” Alex breathed. “Yeah, we’re two minutes out. Keep your eye on those two fuckers.”

 

Lena chuckled before hanging up.

 

“Agent Danvers really, really doesn’t like you,” she said, turning to look at her mother again.

 

“She’s not my daughter,” Lillian said, and her expression changed into her ‘caring mother’ face almost immediately. “You are. Surely you can see that I’m doing this for you, Lena?”

 

“Mother, there really have been times when I have genuinely believed you when you said that. This is not one of them. You killed the woman that I loved, for the sake of your anti-alien agenda. You broke my heart with grief. And now what do you want? You want me by your side, you want me to be your partner in this insane attempt to keep Earth human? You’re delusional, you and Lex both, and it’s past time you paid for the things that you’ve done. You murdered aliens in a bar that was supposed to be their safe space, tried to kill Supergirl a number of times, and finally succeeded. You’re going to jail for a long, long time, Lillian. They’ll never let you out. And if they do, I’ll be there to be sure you never hurt anyone else again. And with all of the money that you and Lex and my father left for me, I’m going to make sure that Earth is a place of refuge for people like Kara, people who just needed a home. Her parents just did exactly what you would have done in their place – they sent their child somewhere they hoped she’d be safe, and all she ever did was help people. You are a disgrace, Lillian Luthor, and I am sorry that I ever wanted your affection or your love, because it was you who was never worthy of it, not me. So save this bullshit act for court,” Lena said, turning her back on the woman she used to call ‘Mom’.

 

Alex arrived a moment later and Lena walked out of the room, passing her mother’s cellphone to a startled Agent. When she reached a moderately secluded area, she leaned over, hands on knees, and tried to catch her breath. Somehow, this felt like another bereavement. The death of the mother she had once wanted so much to love her.

 

“Are you okay?” Maggie asked, touching Lena’s back gently. Lena nodded without straightening, breathing heavily. “You did a good thing here, Lena. She was responsible for what happened to Kara. She deserves to rot in jail for life.”

 

“I’m not so sure,” Lena murmured, standing up straight. “Maybe I should have just…”

 

“Maybe,” Maggie said, shrugging. “I don’t know what I would have done, in your shoes. But you didn’t, and she’s on the way to life in prison at best. You did a good thing.”

 

Lena looked at Maggie, nodding slowly. One thing was for sure. If her mother escaped again, Lena would find her heartbeat and end it for good. She was never going to be able to hurt another person, human or alien, again.

 

She slept better that night than she’d slept since Kara’s death.

 

***

 

It was launch day. The ships were ready, and everything essential had been carefully stowed. Everyone in the city had worked hard to ensure that the ships were in the best possible condition and that they were stocked as fully as possible, in case their journey took them beyond Earth. Kara sincerely hoped that it wouldn’t.

 

They had been fasting and praying for the previous week, but now it was really time to go.

 

“It will be fine,” Astra said, touching Kara’s hair gently. “Whether or not your humans will accept us, we will find a home. I trust in Rao.”

 

“But… so many things could go wrong, Aunt Astra,” Kara said, staring at the huge line of ships. There were a million and a half Kryptonians left. Not much, for a civilisation of billions. If Kandor had survived, a lot more would have been spared. But she should thank Rao for what he did, rather than what he did not do, right?

 

“I have much more faith these days, Little One, because I have you by my side,” Astra said.

 

Kara turned to stare at her.

 

“Do you really mean that?” she asked.

 

“Of course!” Astra answered, eyes wide and sincere. “Since your arrival, we have made a decision that our people have been dragging out for years, Kara. Not only that, but you changed their minds about trying to find a home on the remains of Daxam, and you gave them new hope of a home in a new system far from Daxam, far from Rao, but somewhere where we can rebuild and prosper. Even if the humans do not accept us, we will find somewhere where we can live and build a new Krypton. And all of that, my sweetest girl, is because of you. Because of your strength and your faith. You have given us all hope, and we are stronger together because you have reminded us of who we are. Proud Kryptonians, not intergalactic refugees.”

 

Kara stared at her, and Astra smiled.

 

“One day you will recognise the difficulty of what you have achieved here, Kara. But for now, it is time for us to go. Onward, to Earth. To our new home, wherever it might be.”

 

And so they did. The journey would be long, Kara knew. Their engines were not particularly modern, and while they could exceed the speed of light, they couldn’t hope to reach the speeds of the Hoshin, for example, who could jump from one end of the galaxy to the other in the blink of an eye. It would take a month or so for them to make the journey to the Sol system, and then their next step would hopefully become clear.

 

Kara settled into her seat, buckling in next to her mother and father, and she smiled as she thought of the people she was going to see. She missed her friends and family on Earth, and she couldn’t wait to see them again. Even if Earth was hostile to the Kryptonians, they would welcome Supergirl, at least, who had always fought for them.

 

She drifted off to sleep as the engines fired up and threw them into FTL, praying that she wouldn’t wake up in the Phantom Zone like last time. It was unlikely, given that it was Krypton’s destruction that had caused her to end up there in the first place. But even if it did happen, at least she wouldn’t be alone this time.

 

_Lena was standing at the balcony of her apartment, looking out at the view of National City. She’d managed to stand by impassively as her mother was charged with multiple crimes, but she was no longer impassive. Lillian was her mother, or as close to a mother as Lena had ever had. And now she was dressed in drab prison greys, eyes murderous every time she looked at Lena._

_“You should never have underestimated me, Lillian,” Lena said, out loud, taking a large draught from the glass of scotch in her hand._

_“No, she should not,” Kara murmured approvingly. She was proud._

_“Kara?” Lena said, turning around in circles, unseeing._

_“Yes, :zrhueiao,” Kara said. “It is me.”_

_“Oh god, Kara, I missed you so much. Are you okay?”_

_“I am fine, Lena-te. I love you,” Kara said, without thinking. It couldn’t hurt to tell dream-Lena that she loves her, could it?_

_“My God, Kara. You can’t just… you can’t say things like that, when the last time I saw you, you were dead in my arms!” Lena said, one hand over her mouth, eyes glistening. “Where are you?”_

_“I do not know exactly,” Kara said, thoughtfully. “We have jumped to FTL and are on the way to your solar system. We believe the journey will take a month or so. It is my hope that the President can be persuaded, by our shared history, into an alliance of sorts. Our protection and technology for the chance to settle on one of Jupiter’s moons, or perhaps Saturn’s. We have not yet decided.”_

_“You’re so… formal, Kara,” Lena said, looking around her fruitlessly. “I barely recognise your voice.”_

_“Oh,” Kara said, puzzled. “I am used to speaking in Kryptanhuiao. There are no contractions in our language. English feels… strange, to me now. Maybe because I was lost in my own mind for so long, believing I was dead?”_

_“I understand,” Lena said, nodding. “Are you safe, Kara? You’re fully healed from the Kryptonite poisoning?”_

_Kara was puzzled. It was a strange thing for a dream to ask her, since her dreams were part of her subconscious, and therefore part of her. She played along, anyway._

_“I am well, Lena. My family and the doctors were able to revive me with blood transfusions and yellow sunlight. I am fully recovered.”_

_“Thank god,” Lena breathed._

_“Yes,” Kara said, smiling. She had missed Lena. All of her little gestures, her overly-dramatic ways. She was beautiful and unique. Kara had never met anyone like her, not on 14 planets._

_“And you, my beloved?” Kara asked. “Are you well?”_

_“I am,” Lena said, smiling at nothing. “I have changed, Kara. Something that my mother and Lex did to me. I have powers, now. Not like yours, though they can achieve a lot of the same things. Mental powers. I haven’t found a limit to them, yet.”_

_“That is wonderful,” Kara said. That truly would be a wonderful thing. If anyone could handle unimaginable power gracefully, it would be Lena Luthor._

_“I caught my mother trying to kill your cousin. She’s at the DEO, now, under lock and key,” Lena said. Her image was beginning to fade from Kara’s mind._

_“I am so proud of you, love,” Kara said, and she felt, rather than saw, Lena’s blinding smile in response. “I love you, Lena Luthor.”_

_“I love you too, Kara Zor-El,” Lena said, and Kara couldn’t see her anymore, now. She was gone, and Kara missed her already._

_“I love you, Lena-te,” she said, again, and then the dream faded away._


	6. Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little more of Lena's journey, a visit to the President, and a rescue.

* * *

It took a little while for Lena to come round, the morning after her mother’s arrest. She’d drunk way, way too much Scotch, and she had thrown up at least twice already that morning. She rinsed her mouth out with cold water, glaring at her wan reflection in the mirror. She went into the kitchen and set the coffee maker running while she scrolled through her emails and social media feeds. Things weren’t half as interesting without Kara there. Kara always had interesting stuff to share, and Lena used to wake up most mornings with a number of links from Kara to various things she’d found funny or cute or inspiring. It was a nice thing to wake up to.

 

When the coffee was made, Lena added creamer and a little sugar, stirring it carefully as she walked to the balcony to look out at the city. She missed Kara so badly. She didn’t know how Alex even got up each morning, because looking after Kara, keeping her safe? That had been Alex’s job since she was fifteen years old.

 

Lena stepped out into the sunshine, leaning forward on her elbows. Kara would have loved this balcony. One day, Lena had hoped she might gather the courage to ask Kara out, and then, eventually, to move in with her. She had never wanted that with anyone else, but she had with Kara. She closed her eyes, taking deep breaths. She would _not_ lose control. Kara was, in all likelihood, still alive. So maybe one day they would stand here on this balcony, sipping tea or coffee together in the light of the late morning.

 

It was a few minutes later when she began to remember snippets of the voice she’d heard the night before. Lena-te. Kara had called her that, again. Was it a dream? She had no idea. Kara said… she said that they were on their way, that they were in an FTL-equipped ship. Lena wouldn’t have imagined that, would she?

 

_“I love you, Lena Luthor.”_

 

Lena’s hand went to her mouth. She had to have imagined that. It was just wishful thinking, right?

 

She mulled it over as she flew to the DEO’s new facility, landing on the balcony that she’d insisted they build for her. She wanted to be able to see the sun – it reminded her so much of Kara.

 

As she remembered more of the ‘conversation’ with an invisible Kara the night before, she decided to call Alex and Winn to talk about it. They came over an hour or so later, finding Lena sparring in mid-air with J’onn, inside the huge dome they’d built for her training.

 

“You ready to talk, Lena?” Alex asked, looking up at her and J’onn.

 

“Sure,” Lena said, nodding at J’onn. She had a 2-minute shower, changing in the blink of an eye, before sitting down next to Winn at the small conference table they had set up for such meetings.

 

“I had another dream about Kara. I have no way of knowing any of it is true. Full disclosure - in the dream, she told me she loved me, so it’s more than possible that it’s just wish-fulfillment on my part,” Lena said, spreading her hands.

 

“Even if it is, it’s worth hearing what she said,” J’onn said, in his grave voice.

 

“Okay,” Lena agreed, as Winn and Alex both nodded, too. “I heard her say that she loved me, and I asked her where she was. She said that she and her people had finished building their ships and had launched them. She said that they had engines that could take them faster than light, and that they should take a month or so to arrive,” Lena said. “Again, it could just be a dream. But I think that – just in case – we should speak to the President. Kara said that her people plan to ask the President and the other world leaders for an alliance. They want to settle on one of Jupiter or Saturn’s moons – whichever is the most suitable for their physiology, I would assume. They can do some sort of terraforming on whichever moon they choose – she didn’t say that, but I knew it, somehow – and turn it into a new Krypton. They intend to offer technology and protection to humanity, in return for somewhere to settle. She is clear that if the President turns them down, they will be moving on. They have no wish to fight for a new place to settle. They will find another solar system without inhabitants and colonise that, instead. But it will be easier if they have allies nearby. Stronger together,” Lena finished her tale with a wry smile.

 

“How sure are you that it was a vision and not just a dream?” Winn asked hesitantly.

 

“Not very,” Lena said, shrugging. “The part about her loving me threw me off. It comes off as complete wish fulfilment. The sort of thing that someone might dream, when someone they love has been taken from them. The rest seems to line up with what I dreamed before, though. Coming here on ships, not going to Daxam. It makes sense. A yellow sun will keep the Kryptonians young and strong, and they can build a new population on a suitable planet or moon.”

 

“I think we should probably start monitoring your brain activity,” Winn said, thoughtfully. “I think I can design something – maybe an implant – that measures your brain function and which parts are lit up at any given time. Kind of like a portable MRI, but not. Then we won’t have to guess whether it’s a vision or a normal dream, in future.”

 

“That’s a good idea, Agent Schott,” J’onn said, nodding at Winn. “See that you set that up as soon as you can. We need good intel. But for now, Miss Luthor, I’d like you to accompany me – and Agent Danvers – to Washington. If we are to arrange an alliance with the remaining Kryptonians, we need to get ahead of this.”

 

Lena nodded, wide-eyed. She was going to see the President of the United States, to potentially arrange an alliance between the people of two worlds. Not bad for the bastard child of a Luthor, she thought wryly. Not bad at all.

 

The meeting with the President went ahead two days later. J’onn and Alex took the DEO jet, and Lena met them in Washington, preferring the freedom of her own flight ability. She had her own flight suit, now, because unlike Kara and her cousin, she wasn’t impervious to cold and heat. She could ignore it, but she’d never enjoyed being cold. She used the basic material from Kara’s suit as a base, reinforcing it in a number of places where a human needed the support. She also had a helmet and a backup oxygen supply, in case something happened to compromise her ability to breathe while she was flying. She was planning for everything, though so far her powers seemed limitless.

 

She made it to DC in an hour, managing to break the sound barrier over an uninhabited area of one of the dusty states in the mid-West. She startled a few cows, but that was about all. Of all of the powers she had, flight was her favourite. It gave her a sense of freedom she’d never experienced before.

 

She landed next to the DEO jet at the airport, and Alex stepped out of the plane, throwing her a garment bag. Lena pulled off her helmet, letting her hair out, and she grinned at Alex.

 

“Thanks, Agent Danvers,” Lena said.

 

“Sure thing, Miss Luthor,” Alex said, smiling back. “Someone’s in a good mood.”

 

“Flying makes me feel good,” Lena said, shrugging.

 

“Kara used to have that same smile on her face when she flew,” Alex said, wistfully. “I always wanted to try it.”

 

“Maybe you will, one day. I certainly didn’t expect to be doing it,” Lena said. She shrugged out of her flight suit and into her ‘Meeting the President’ suit in a flash. The DEO staff didn’t blink an eye, well-used to her popping in and out of their headquarters in various states. She was one of them, now. It made her feel good, that she could belong with people like this.

 

They got into an SUV, J’onn in the front and Alex and Lena in the back. They chatted about Maggie and a new case that she was looking into, and before she knew it they were at the back gates of the White House.

 

“Have you ever met the President before?” Alex asked.

 

“No,” Lena said. “I’ve never had the pleasure.”

 

“I think you’re going to like her,” Alex said, with a sly smile. Lena could have read her mind to find out what she meant, but she wasn’t that desperate to find out. It would become clear soon enough.

 

It became clear to Lena almost immediately that President Olivia Marsdin was no more human than J’onn Jonzz. She could read the woman’s mind, at least a little, but it was… murky. And her first language was certainly not English.

 

“So, J’onn, to what do I owe this unexpected meeting? You and Agent Danvers I expected, but not Lena Luthor, of all people,” the President said, eyes narrow.

 

“It’s a bit of a long story, Madam President,” J’onn said.

 

“I have time,” the President said, shrugging. “I mean, of course, I don’t, but since it’s you, I trust that this is important enough to put off some important diplomats. So please, tell me what’s happening.”

 

Just as she said that, one of the many doors in the Oval Office opened without ceremony, and Cat Grant stalked in.

 

“Sorry, Liv,” she said, smiling at the President luminously. “I was unavoidably detained.”

 

“Am I going to have to issue another pardon, Cat?” President Marsdin asked, with a fond smile.

 

“Not today, darling. Now, to what do we owe the pleasure of your company, J’onn? Agent Scully? And you, Lena?” Cat asked, sitting next to the President and taking her hand, lacing their fingers together, apparently unconsciously. Lena _just_ managed not to gasp in surprise and delight.

 

J’onn told them firstly about how Lena’s powers had developed since Kara’s death, and Cat wiped away several tears at the thought of her old assistant.

 

“Let me see these powers, please?” the President asked, politely. Lena nodded. She lifted all of them, chairs and all, into the air, floating them around for a while before setting the chairs back on the floor.

 

“Well. That was something,” Cat said.

 

“Indeed it was,” the President agreed.

 

“That’s nothing,” Lena said, reluctantly. “It’s a parlour trick, compared to the rest.”

 

“Okay,” the President said. “What else is there?”

 

Lena explained that the suspected nuclear explosion from a few months ago had been her, before she’d managed to gain some control over her powers. She told them about the Frigate, about the Cadmus kidnapping she’d thwarted, and about her psychic powers.

 

“Psychic like mind-reading, like J’onn?” President Marsdin asked.

 

“Yes. But not the same. It seems I have to be able to read emotions before I can find my way into a mind. And recently, I’ve begun having dreams. Do you know about Superman’s Fortress of Solitude?” she asked. Cat and the President nodded.

 

“Jor-El, Superman’s father, or his AI, I suppose. He’s been helping me to gain more control over all of my abilities. We were testing my vision, and I managed to see all the way to where Krypton used to be, and I remembered a dream I had, about Kara. When I mentioned a specific thing, Jor-El started searching the archives. I had a dream that Kara was speaking to her aunt, Astra. Astra died a year or so ago, here on Earth. Alex was forced to kill her because she was going to kill J’onn. Anyway, Kara and Astra, they were talking about where they were, and they said that they were in a pocket of folded space. I thought it was just some dream mumbo-jumbo that I’d just made up, but Jor-El, the AI, said that it was highly unlikely. His brother, Zor-El – Kara’s father – he set up a failsafe, a backup in case Krypton was destroyed. He invented something that would transport Argo City – the city Kara lived in – into an area of folded space. As you can imagine, I was stunned. I went to speak to Alex and after we’d worked through the shock, we started investigating. There is an area of folded space around 2/3 of the way to Krypton, and Kara’s funeral pod – and her aunt’s – would have passed through that area of space on the way to Rao. So despite our doubts, it is actually feasible.”

 

Cat bowed her head around halfway through Lena’s tale, and when she looked up, Lena was stunned to see that the media mogul and Special Advisor to the President was crying.

 

“Cat?” Lena asked, reaching a hand out. Cat took it, squeezing it tight.

 

“Do you think she… you really think she’s alive?” Cat said, half-sobbing.

 

“I think it’s the only answer that makes sense,” Lena said, nodding. “If a Kryptonian supercomputer thinks it’s the only logical option, then who am I to argue?”

 

Cat looked at her, smiling through her tears. The President leaned over and wiped Cat’s eyes tenderly.  Lena looked away. She felt like she was interrupting a private moment.

 

“So, is that all, or is there more to this story?” the President asked, suddenly all business.

 

“There’s a little more. I had another dream a couple of nights ago. I spoke to Kara. I can’t be 100% sure that it was a vision, because there were certain elements of… wish-fulfillment? But if it is true – she told me that her people finished building their ships, and that they’ve launched for our solar system. Now, if that is accurate, they could be here in a month, perhaps a few days less. Their leader is Kara’s mother. The intend to come to Earth to ask for an alliance. They get somewhere to live, and we get a million and a half superpowered protectors. Not to mention that they have promised to share technology with us.” Lena said.

 

“They want to live here?” Cat asked, surprised and a little wary.

 

“Not on Earth, no. They want to colonise a moon, probably one of Jupiter’s. They have the technology to terraform a planet, they’ve just been looking for the right one. When Kara came along, it seems that she persuaded them that the humans might welcome them.”

 

“Well. I don’t quite know what to say about that,” President Marsdin said. “What are your thoughts, Miss Luthor, on their intentions?”

 

“I’m not sure I’m the best person to ask. I can only tell you what you already know – that Kara – Supergirl – is sincere. She just wants somewhere for her Kryptonian family to live in peace and safety. They considered Daxam but she managed to persuade them that was a terrible idea, since the Daxamites blame the Kryptonians for the damage to their planet and the loss of so many of their people,” Lena said, spreading her hands.

 

“And what about you, J’onn? Do you have any idea whether the Kryptonians are likely to be allies or enemies?” President Marsdin asked.

 

“I can only tell you that the Kryptonians were widely regarded as a noble and honest people. I can’t imagine them making an offer of alliance only to stab humanity in the back. If they are able to terraform another planet within the system, they will have what they need – a home. They don’t even need our permission, Madam President. The fact that they are intending to ask says a lot, in my view,” J’onn said, voice rumbling.

 

“I agree,” the President said. “On Durla, the Kryptonians were known to be peaceful and their only desire was for knowledge. They fought in several wars, but only on the side of justice. It’s my belief that – if this offer is forthcoming – they are sincere.”

 

_Durla?_

“I’m an alien, Miss Luthor, as everyone else here is aware. I apologise. Durla, my planet, was overrun by invaders a long time ago, and I, like so many others before me, sought refuge here on Earth.”

 

“Thank you for trusting me, Madam President,” Lena said, inclining her head.

 

“You’re most welcome, Miss Luthor. You know, if you had told me a year ago that I would be confiding in one of the Luthor family about my true identity, and that I trusted them? I would have told you to take a long walk off a short pier. But it appears that you are a different type of Luthor. Given the level of power you have developed, I think we’ll be working together more in the future,” the President said, smiling.

 

Lena found herself smiling back, slightly stunned. The President, who was an alien, trusted her. Lena Luthor. It was… unthinkable.

 

“Thank you, Madam President,” Lena said, dropping her eyes.

 

“Now, darling, I think you and I need to go and have a long talk and a think through the implications of Miss Luthor’s dreams,” Cat said, smiling up at the President. “Lena, can you please make yourself available for us, should we have any questions? And if you do speak to Kara again, please let her know that she is missed.”

 

Lena looked up, meeting Cat’s eyes, and was unsurprised at the tears, this time.

 

“Of course, Miss Grant. Thank you.”

 

Cat nodded, and J’onn stood, Alex and Lena following him almost immediately.

 

Lena flew by the Luthor mansion first, promising to meet Alex and J’onn later. She still had to give them all the information that Lillian had so helpfully provided.

 

She found the safe Lillian had been thinking of, filled with top secret information from when Cadmus had been an official government agency. She also found lists of supporters and Cadmus agents, and she sighed in relief. This could be it, the end of Cadmus. For good.

 

She wandered around the empty halls of the mansion, one of her childhood homes, and was surprised at how little she felt about the place. It had been years since she’d even visited, and technically this was her home, but she thought it might be about time to donate the building for use as a shelter or a children’s home or something. It certainly wasn’t doing anyone any good sitting here empty.

 

She made the flight back to the DEO slowly, taking the time to enjoy the sights of the country from the air. It was beautiful, and she wished she’d had the chance to do this with Kara. Part of her still hoped that she might, but she didn’t want to hope too hard for it, in case it was ripped from her, the way Kara had been.

 

She landed and found Alex and J’onn waiting for her in a conference room near the back of the complex.

 

“So, Lena. What have you got for us?” J’onn asked.

 

“Well, when I read Lillian’s mind, she was thinking about these files. If they’re legitimate, then they’re the names of every Cadmus agent and every high-ranking official, politician, or businessperson who has ever donated to their cause. Not only that, but she also gave away the location where Jeremiah Danvers is being hidden. Again, _if_ it’s legitimate. I don’t want to make the mistake of underestimating her. I’m fairly certain that she had no idea about the extent of my powers, but it wouldn’t be the first time she managed to put one over on me.”

 

Alex was staring, and J’onn was smiling at her.

 

“I think we have an op to plan, Miss Luthor. Would you be willing to come along, to infiltrate this facility the way we did with the other one?”

 

Lena nodded, a small smile on her face.

 

“Excellent. Let’s get to it.”

 

The DEO’s satellites were able to find the offshore rig that Cadmus were using to hold Jeremiah Danvers in fairly short order. It was built as a prison, at one point, for vigilantes like the Bat family, just in case any of them should go rogue. It was the perfect set up to hold superpowered aliens.

 

The strike team were assembled and on the way in less than 6 hours, and as she had before, Lena went in first. She was able to put all of the humans asleep right away with her mental abilities, but she found it a little more difficult with some of the others.

 

“J’onn,” she said, tapping her earpiece to bring it to life, “some of the people here are aliens. I can’t make them all sleep, and there’s no way to tell friend from foe. What do you suggest?”

 

“Wait there, Miss Luthor,” J’onn said. Lena did so, scanning her surroundings constantly for any sudden attacks. A minute or so later, she was joined by the Green Martian, in all of his glory.

 

“J’onn. What should we do?” she asked, frowning.

 

“We go room to room, Lena. You and I together are more than a match for anything Cadmus can throw at us. At least I hope so. We go room to room, and we read the minds of any aliens we find, and we take it from there. Are you happy with that?”

 

“Of course,” Lena said, nodding. They went to the first room along and Lena lifted the door from its hinges with her mind. There was a tall alien in there, similar to a fish, but with humanoid limbs. It clicked at them, holding its upper limbs up in surrender. J’onn’s eyes burned red and he nodded.

 

“This one’s fine. Wait here,” J’onn said, miming that the alien was to stay. It sat, holding its limbs close, and Lena felt a flash of pity. How long had it been there?

 

It was the same in most of the cells. There were a variety of aliens and enhanced humans, none of whom were resistant. Except for one. A huge, gorilla like being called Grodd. He wanted to go back home, and he screamed at them both telepathically, making both of them double over in pain. Lena gained her senses more quickly than J’onn did. She reached out and touched the huge monster, and managed to reassure him telepathically that they would get him home, as soon as they worked out where his home was. He settled down after that, and Lena managed to convince him to stand still and be bound with Thanagarian Nth Metal handcuffs.

 

They called in the remainder of their strike team, who were disgruntled that they were only there to clean up. They said nothing, though, gathering together the mixture of humans and aliens efficiently. J’onn picked up one man, a large, dark-haired man, who Lena took to be Jeremiah Danvers, and he carried him to the Blackhawk personally. Lena flew back to the DEO ahead of the Blackhawks, meeting Alex and confirming that they had her father along with a large number of imprisoned aliens and Cadmus agents.

 

Alex threw herself at Lena, sobbing, and it was all Lena could do to hold on, murmuring soothing words to her about how it was all going to be okay. She surreptitiously texted Maggie to come to the DEO as soon as possible, because this sort of personal contact was not in her wheelhouse. She let Alex cry on her, however, until Jeremiah was brought into the DEO’s infirmary, because she knew that’s what Kara would want her to do.

 

Lena sat down, exhausted, as the DEO staff around her bustled in and out, trying to find places to home their influx of alien refugees, not to mention the dozens of Cadmus agents they’d captured. It had been a hell of a day, and they still had a huge list of people to work through before they could disband Cadmus entirely. Not only that, if her dreams were true, there was a fleet of Kryptonian ships headed their way to ask for refuge in Earth’s star system.

 

Lena waited for another twenty minutes or so, when a dishevelled-looking Maggie Sawyer dashed into the control room, looking for Alex.

 

“She’s in the infirmary. Her father’s alive,” Lena said, dredging up a smile from somewhere.

 

“You saved him. You did this, Luthor. We owe you,” Maggie said, eyes wide. “I have to go. But thank you, Lena.”

 

Lena nodded, bemused, and smiled at the activity around her. She was too exhausted to do anything else, so she made her way to the balcony, still in her tac gear from the mission, and took off into the sky. She was asleep almost before her head hit the pillow, and she let her mind rest, safe in the knowledge that at least one more of Kara’s family was safer tonight.

 

***

 

Kara was sparring with Astra. There was little else to do but research, pray, read, watch Kryptonian holo-movies, or spar. Of course others had found more… pleasurable ways to fill their time. Kara didn’t have anyone she wanted to be close to like that, however, so she spent a lot of time working out and working on her fighting forms with Astra. They were doubly close, now, she and Astra, after having the shared experience of dying, only to end up in a folded pocket of space containing the entirety of Argo City.

 

“You fight badly, today, Little One. What are you thinking?” Astra asked, after a particularly wild swing from Kara.

 

“I am sorry, Aunt Astra. I am worried. I keep having dreams about Lena, about my friends, my Earth family. I worry that they may not be all right. I have no way to know.”

 

“Perhaps not yet, Little One. But in time, we will be close enough for communication. You know that to worry is to live the thing over and over again, Kara.”

 

Kara slumped down onto the floor, sighing. She unwrapped her hands carefully, and Astra sat on the floor next to her.

 

“Come, Little One. Let us meditate and send our worries into Rao’s light.”

 

And so they did.

 

It was a week of mostly featureless space later when Kara had another dream. This time, she was in Lena’s office, and they were lying together on Lena’s couch.

 

_“I have missed you so much, Kara,” Lena said, trembling in Kara’s arms._

_“I missed you too, my love. I never expected this, to have a second chance. To come back to you. It feels like a miracle,” Kara said, kissing the back of Lena’s neck gently. She smelled so good, like expensive perfumes and the sweet products she used to keep her hair sleek._

_“I wish you could be here sooner.”_

_“As do I,” Kara agreed._

_“The President – I spoke to her. I told her that you were headed here with your people. I think they might consider your request,” Lena said, turning in Kara’s arms to look at her._

_“You believe she will help us?” Kara asked._

_“Yes,” Lena said, smiling. “She knew of the Kryptonians, from when she was on Durla. And J’onn put in a good word, too. I think that we all might end up as neighbours.”_

_Lena suddenly looked sad, and Kara lifted her chin to look at her._

_“Why do you seem so sad, Lena-te?” Kara asked._

_“I… I know you’re coming back, but I can’t believe that you won’t be staying on Earth, Kara. I would never ask you to, of course. I know how much you’ve missed being with your own people. But I’m going to miss you. And I still don’t know if these dreams are real. It could just be wishful thinking, because in what universe would you actually love me, Kara? I mean, it doesn’t make sense.”_

_Kara stared at her, confused. This was a strange dream. Lena was a figment of her imagination only, but she seemed to be exhibiting self-doubt, something Kara wouldn’t normally expect from someone in a dream._

_“I do not know if this is a dream or some sort of shared space, Lena. As you said, you have mental powers. Kryptonians do not. We were made to resist telepathy. But perhaps your telepathy is different, somehow?” Kara suggested._

_“It is, a little. Winn calls it telempathy, because I use emotions as my way into a person’s mind,” Lena said, smiling at Kara. She ran her finger along Kara’s lower lip, and it made Kara tremble._

_“Regardless, Lena Luthor, I have not said that I will not stay on Earth. Currently I have no plans because we do not know that the Earth’s governments will allow us to stay in your solar system. If we do remain under Sol’s light, however, we may offer some of our people as guardians, in much the same way as Kal-El and I have been. When things are more settled, I may decide that Earth is where I wish to be. With the technology you perfected with Rhea, we will be able to move back and forth between worlds in the blink of an eye,” Kara said. “Of course, if I were to have a spouse, that person would be welcome in whatever new home we make.”_

_Lena gasped, her hand fluttering to her neck._

_“Do you mean….?” She trailed off, eyes wide._

_“I love you, Lena Luthor. My people and I – we take love seriously. If, when we meet again, we decide to be together, I would want to marry you. I would want children and a life with you, Lena Luthor.”_

_Lena stared at her, and then threw herself forward, kissing Kara. It was messy and open, and Kara could not hold herself back. She reciprocated, and her hands roamed Lena’s body the same way Lena’s hands roamed hers. It was a feeling she had never experienced before. Mon-El had been a disappointment, as a lover. He had little to no interest in Kara’s satisfaction, so long as he got his. This feeling, of electricity running through her entire body at a simple touch – it was new, and heady, and exciting. She couldn’t wait to feel it in person._

_Kara felt her body begin to pull her back, and she reluctantly stopped kissing Lena._

_“I am sorry, :zrhueiao. My body is calling me back. Stay safe, my love, and I pray that Rao allows us to meet again soon.”_

_“I love you, Kara,” Lena said, touching Kara’s face with delicate fingers. “I love you so much.”_

Kara’s eyes were brimming with tears when she opened them.


	7. Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More dreaming, a new power, and a look at Kara's life on the ship

* * *

Lena sat up, gasping. She could still feel the heat from Kara’s hands on her skin. Had that really happened? She gingerly lifted the band from her head, designed by Winn to detect a certain kind of brainwave, and turned to the monitor at her bedside.

 

She took a moment to absorb the results. According to the readout, her dreams of Kara _weren’t_ just dreams. She was somehow managing to link with Kara’s mind, Kara who was flying through space at faster than light speed. And that meant… that meant that Kara really did love her. Kara Zor-El, Supergirl, Kara Danvers – she was alive, she was flying through space, and she was in love with Lena Luthor.

 

Just then, Lena’s cellphone rang, and she picked it up absently.

 

“Hello?” she murmured, still trying to take in what was happening.

 

“They’re not dreams, Leeeennnaaaa!!!!”

 

It was Winn, of course. Lena giggled, honest-to-god giggled, and she wished she could be there to give him a hug. She needed a hug.

 

She heard a small ‘pop’ and then she was standing next to Winn in the middle of the DEO in her pyjamas.

 

“Shit, Lena! Where the hell did you come from?” Winn asked, falling off his chair dramatically at her appearance.

 

“Never mind, Winn, just… please. She’s really alive, Winn, and she loves me!” Tears were streaming down Lena’s face.

 

Winn jumped up, wrapping her up in his arms, and Lena sobbed into his shoulder uncontrollably. Kara _loved_ her. Winn talked into her ear quietly, telling her about a new invention of his that was designed to pick up the radiation from ships travelling at FTL. They stood there for about half an hour, Lena crying herself out, and the DEO agents on the night shift gave them a wide berth.

 

It was a while later when Lena was sitting at the table in a conference room, sipping terrible coffee that Winn had gone to great lengths to get for her. J’onn had roused himself from bed, and had called Alex in, too.

 

“She’d want to know, now that we’re certain,” J’onn said, and his tone brooked no argument.

 

Alex held on to Lena for almost ten minutes, crying into her shoulder, and this time Lena didn’t feel half as awkward. Maggie was there, too, and she squeezed Lena tightly, murmuring her congratulations. For what, Lena wasn’t exactly sure, but she appreciated the sentiment.

 

Lena told them the details of the dream, leaving out the parts that were a little more private, and confirmed that the readings of her brain waves showed that her brain wasn’t in sleep. It was that tiny part of her brain, the left parahippocampal gyrus, working overtime once again.

 

“And then you just appeared here in the DEO control centre? In your PJs?” Maggie asked, nose wrinkling in amusement.

 

“Yeah. Well – I guess that’s one more power I didn’t know I had,” Lena said, shrugging.

 

“Another power to learn how to control, you mean,” J’onn said sternly.

 

“Sure. That too,” Lena said. She didn’t care. She could suddenly develop the power to juggle planets and she wouldn’t care. Kara _loved_ her.

 

They sat up talking for a little longer, and then went their separate ways. Try as she might, Lena couldn’t replicate her instant transportation home, so she changed into plain black gear and flew instead. The city hadn’t been too fazed by their anonymous black-clad flying figure so far, but a woman in pyjamas flying was bound to be noticed. When she was home she stripped off her clothes, finding a fresh pair of pyjamas, and was asleep again before she could think twice.

 

***

 

Kara was working with her father and Jor-El on the decision as to which of the various moons of Jupiter and Saturn they should choose to transform into a new Krypton. Assuming that the humans agreed to their proposed alliance, of course.

 

Kara was reading up on the atmospheric density on Titan when her aunt Lara came to sit next to her. Lara was a slight woman, but she was truly Kal-El’s mother, because she was a woman made entirely of steel. She had insisted on having a baby naturally, and Jor-El had been helpless against her gentle insistence, despite it causing a serious issue for most of the Council. Lara loved Jor-El fiercely, and she was, of all of them, probably the most eager to get to Earth. She had last seen her son as a tiny infant, and now he was one of the protectors of Earth.

 

“Are you well, Little One?” Lara asked. She had long dark hair, like Alura and Astra, but hers was straighter and sleeker. She had green eyes like Kal, and Kara had always thought her one of the most beautiful women she’d ever seen.

 

“I am, Aunt Lara. Are you?” Kara asked, smiling.

 

“I am well. You seem troubled, darling. Are you sure that you are well?” Lara asked.

 

“Why do you think that I…”

 

Lara poked her in the middle of the forehead, chortling.

 

“Crinkle, Little One. It has given you away for years,” Lara said, grinning. Kara sighed. _Stupid crinkle…_

 

“I miss her. Lena. She was my friend, my best friend. She had to watch me die. Her mother – she is kind of a nut. She hates aliens, and her son Lex tried to kill Clark – Kal-El. Lex actually managed to kill him, for all intents and purposes, but Kal-El’s body regenerated under the yellow sun. But Lillian – Lena’s mother – she had a big problem with me, for some reason, and she used Lena to kill me. She was spying on her daughter, and she found out that we had plans to go to a certain restaurant that I loved, and she paid someone to lace my food with some industrial-strength Kryptonite.”

 

“Your mother told me of this, my sweet. You seem conflicted about your Lena. Do you believe she had something to do with her mother trying to kill you?”

 

“No,” Kara said, shaking her head emphatically. “I trust her completely. She is… she always was, so different from her family. It is… something else. I did not realise when I was on Earth, but I think… no, I know. I am in love with her. I dream of her all the time. I had a dream a few nights ago that we kissed and it was the most incredible feeling I have ever had. I never felt anything like it before. It’s my imagination, only, I know. But it seems like it is really her, in these dreams.”

 

Lara looked at her, studying her expression for a moment.

 

“You know, when I met your uncle, we had shared dreams. We both thought they were separate, that we were dreaming about each other. But when we compared notes, we realised that it was a sort of true dreaming, a place where soulmates can meet. Usually Kryptonians do not have those sorts of gifts, but it has been known to happen. If your mate has a hint of telepathy, it is possible that what you are seeing – it is a true-dream. I remember when Jor kissed me the first time in a dream – I felt that I was going to fly away. My heart was pounding, my skin made from static electricity. I felt him, here,” Lara said, touching just above her heart. “The next time you dream in this way, ask her some questions. If she is a figment of your mind only, she will only know what you know. If she tells you things about Earth after your departure, then it is more than possible that it is real, and not a simple dream,” Lara said, stroking Kara’s hair away from her face.

 

“And if it is not a simple dream?” Kara asked plaintively.

 

“Then she is your love, Little One, and you will reunite with her joyfully when we reach Sol’s light,” Lara smiled, and it was blinding.

 

“You always make me feel better, Aunt Lara,” Kara said, putting her head on her aunt’s shoulder.

 

“You make _me_ feel better, Little One. You defended a planet not your own, and you strove to make a difference even though you couldn’t look after Kal-El. I never thought that you would feel such a responsibility, Kara, but perhaps I should have, because you were the most conscientious child. And a pledge given to your mother before her supposed death would be one you would hold close. I am so glad you did not have to sacrifice a childhood for my son. I have felt a great deal of guilt about that all of these years,” Lara said.

 

“I have been so guilty that I couldn’t help him. He was grown, a man, a superhero. He didn’t need a blundering child with superpowers in his life,” Kara said, sighing.

 

“Perhaps not. But if you had arrived on Earth together, you would have looked after him, though you were only 13 years old. Believe me when I say that he is going to have more than a few words from his mother concerning that matter. But I am grateful to your Earth families for all that they have done for you and Kal, Kara. I wish to help them in any way I can.”

 

“They might even take you up on that. Kal’s mother is tired and she runs her farm alone, with help only from the hands,” Kara said.

 

Lara frowned.

 

“You think they need help from us? As farm labourers?”

 

Kara sniggered.

 

“No, Aunt Lara. Sorry. I could not resist. Of course not. They would never take anything from you, not Clark’s family or mine. They will probably thank you and my parents for sending them children from beyond the stars.”

 

Lara mock-glared at Kara.

 

“Always the trickster, Kara Zor-El. Well, we shall see how it is when I meet your love, and I find the holocubes of you running around wearing nothing but a blanket-cape when you were little.”

 

“You would not dare!” Kara gasped, drawing back.

 

“Would I not?” Lara’s face was expressionless.

 

“Fine, I give up, Aunt Lara. You are right and I am wrong. You are the best,” Kara said, giggling as Lara tickled her. “I missed you all so much. It is almost too much, to be here with you all,” she said, looking around the room and watching Jor and Zor talking about Ganymede with their greying heads close together.

 

“It was very difficult to realise that our children were out of our reach, once the failsafe kicked in. We tried to locate your pods, to call them back, but we were too late. Once we had recovered from the shock and grief of Krypton’s death, you were likely in the Phantom Zone and Kal was most of the way to Earth. I wish your father had thought about finding one of these space pockets a little closer to your new home. He says it does not work that way,” Lara flicked a finger dismissively, “but I’m sure he could have worked something else out.”

 

“Woman, would you cease with the arguing? Your specialty is health, and mine is science. If there was another way, I would have found it, given more time. But we didn’t have enough,” Zor said, turning and pointing a finger at Lara, eyes narrowed.

 

Kara giggled. Her father and Lara had hashed out this particular argument 17 times since she arrived, and it was no less funny this time.

 

“He thinks he knows science? Why then do you need your daughter to do this work for you, foolish old man? It is because she is smarter than you, because the women of El are all smarter than you grey-haired old curmudgeons.”

 

Kara stifled another giggle, and Zor glared at Lara, muttering to himself about ‘glorified nurses’ and their lack of science knowledge.

 

Before Krypton’s destruction, Lara Jor-El had been the planet’s chief physician. She held more qualifications before she was twenty than Jor or Zor held, even now. Lara simply glared at Zor, dismissing him with a finger.

 

“Anyway, as I was saying, my dearest niece, I wish that we had been closer and that we had been able to find you. Your return has galvanised us into action. I fear we were… directionless, before. Astra tried to get us moving but even she didn’t have the enthusiasm that you do. We are more than lucky that your pod passed so close by our distant pocket of space,” Lara said, raising her voice on the ‘distant’. Zor shuffled, affronted, but said nothing.

 

“Have you been having this argument since the day Argo City was transported?” Kara asked, biting her lip to hold in the laughter.

 

“As often as possible, yes,” Lara said, with a straight face. “We ran out of new holo stories a few years in, and it is just funny to see how silly your father gets.”

 

“Dad, you know if you don’t rise to it, she will stop, do you not?” Kara said. Her father sighed wearily.

 

“I tried that for four years, Kara. Four. She persists, still.”

 

Jor turned and winked at Kara and Lara both. Lara smiled back demurely.

 

“I have missed you, Aunt,” Kara said, chuckling. She felt warm and safe, despite hurtling through space at speeds light itself could not match. Her family, her home – they had been gone, and now they were back. If Rao willed it, perhaps they could reunite with her new family and home. It would be a dream come true.

 

***

 

_That night, Kara made a conscious choice to reach out for Lena. At first there was nothing, like a hand sliding through mist, but then she was there, her scent, her skin…_

_“Lena,” Kara breathed._

_“Kara,” Lena said, stepping forward and wrapping Kara up in her arms. “I missed you.”_

_“I missed you too, Lena-te. I need to speak with you, :zrhueiao. I need to know, are you real? Is this real? Are we speaking now, in some telepathic way?” Kara asked._

_Lena drew back a little._

_“Yes, darling. I thought I’d told you that.”_

_“I do not remember, Lena. But my aunt – she knows a lot, and she suggested that perhaps our dreams were more than simple dreams. She said if one of a pair has some sort of telepathic ability, the pair might be able to true-dream.”_

_“The pair? What kind of pair would we need to be?” Lena asked, eyes narrowing as they always did when she was thinking._

_“Like… soulmates, perhaps?” Kara said, and she felt herself blush._

_“If that were true, Kara, it would be a dream come true, not simply a true-dream,” Lena said, smiling. “In answer to your other question – when you… when my mother killed you, I… I fell asleep for a while. A coma, really. For 48 hours. It was the shock of losing you, I suppose. When I woke, I was sick for a while and then… I started to develop powers. Pyrokinesis, first. Then telekinesis. It was due to my anger, because it was always when I thought of Lillian. Things would fly across the room, or set on fire. And if I wanted a hug, I would find a blanket wrapping itself around me. It was… so strange. Alex and Winn and Maggie – they’ve been amazing, since you’ve been gone. So when it started happening, I called them. I showed them everything, the powers that I’d developed. They helped me to train, to learn how to control it. And then they brought me to the Fortress. Your cousin let me into his Fortress of Solitude, Kara. I couldn’t believe it. I learned from Jor-El’s AI, how to use my mind, how to centre myself. Torquasm-Vo, I believe it’s called? So I mostly have it under control,” Lena said. She looked weary, suddenly._

_“What are you not telling me, Lena?” Kara asked._

_“It… it was bad, when you were gone. I think… I think I was dying. I tried to eat, but I couldn’t. It was too hard. Like swallowing bricks. I lost most of my muscle and I was basically starving to death. And then those powers came, from nowhere, and I was… I was back to normal. I was me, again, but stronger.”_

_Lena looked down at her hands. Kara pulled them both down onto a couch, and she pulled Lena’s hands closer to her, stroking the knuckles gently._

_“Why would you not tell me this, love?” Kara asked._

_“I was ashamed, Kara. You’ve always been so strong, and the moment you weren’t there, I lost my mind and almost starved myself to death! I mean, what kind of person does that? I wanted to be strong for you, to make the world a better place the way you always did, but instead I just curled up in a ball and waited to die.” Lena asked, tears streaming down her face._

_Kara pulled her close, careful as always, and kissed her cheek._

_“You are so strong, Lena. You lost someone you cared about, and it almost broke you, but you got up and you continued. To be strong is to be weak, but to stand up and live anyway,” Kara said._

_“I love you, Kara. I miss you so much,” Lena said, crying into Kara’s shoulder._

_“I’m coming home, Lena-te. Faster than light itself,” Kara assured her._

_“That reminds me,” Lena said, moving back a little and wiping her eyes. “I spoke to the President. Did you know she was an alien, Kara? Because I was really surprised. Anyway, she seems positive about the Kryptonians, but I think it will be tough to convince the world’s leaders to agree. I don’t know how she’ll go about doing it. Is there anything I can tell them that might reassure them? Or give them an incentive to let your people stay inside our solar system?” Lena asked._

_“Yes,” Kara said. “We plan to settle on a moon of Saturn’s, or of Jupiter’s. We plan to mine the planets – or rather, to collect the rain that falls on the surface of each planet.”_

_“Shit. Diamonds!” Lena said, hand over her mouth._

_“Yes. To the diamonds, not to the shit,” Kara said, grinning. “In any case, with atmospheric suits and other equipment, our people can fly around the planets to mine diamonds. There is also a possibility that another of the moons might have sapphire deposits. However, we plan to use the diamonds not only for jewellery, but for interstellar communications and travel. There is an earlier form of our interstellar drives that used crystals, and diamonds would be a more than adequate substitute. They can also be used for quantum entanglement comm systems, to allow simultaneous communication with star systems galaxies away. Furthermore, we planned to offer a sort of Kryptonian protection force for Earth. We will stand up for the planet if it is attacked, of course, but in addition, there are many of our younger people who would be happy to use their powers – once trained – to protect a city or an area in the same way that Kal and I have been doing since we became Superman and Supergirl.”_

_“Wow,” Lena said, looking surprised. “I’d never thought of using diamonds that way.”_

_“They are not valued on other planets, Lena, as humans value them - or at least not for aesthetics. They are tremendously useful, and if we make small changes to their structure, they can become even harder. Any diamonds we mine from wherever we are allowed will be shared with Earth. What we want in return is assistance when we arrive, food and water enough to allow us to get settled in our new home, and trade with Earth. We have advanced technology, aeons ahead of what Earth has. We might be able to solve global warming – a vast number of our best minds were in Argo City when Krypton exploded. Tell the president all of that, and tell her that I swear to her, in Rao’s name, that we have no desire for conquest. We want a new home of our own and we wish to have allies in that new home, should someone like the Daxamites or the Dominators ever come back.”_

_“The Dominators?” Lena asked, brow crinkling._

_“I met them on Earth One. They were… unpleasant,” Kara said, shuddering. “Could you tell me a little more of your life, my love, since I left?”_

_Lena told her about the development of her powers, the sheer magnitude of what she could do, and blushed when Kara was impressed._

 

 _“That Frigate was incredibly heavy, Lena. You lifted it with your_ brain _!” Kara exclaimed._

_“It was. It was when I accidentally thought of my mother and blew it into a billion pieces that J’onn got a bit ticked off though, I think,” Lena said, grinning._

_Kara laughed._

_“I can well imagine it, love. So what else, since then? Have you moved the Earth into a new orbit?”_

_Lena thought about it for a moment, clearly wondering if she had enough power._

_“Don’t even think about it, Lena. The Earth is fine as it is!” Kara said, eyes wide._

_“You know, your cousin looked at me just like that when he realised how much power I had,” Lena said. “I can’t say it didn’t make me feel a little smug. He’s always been kind of a superior asshole, don’t you think?”_

_Kara barely smothered her laughter behind her hand._

_“He means well, Lena. He has a little more pomposity than is normal with our people. I think he imagines that we were all gods among the stars, when the reality is a lot more prosaic.”_

_Lena chuckled._

_“So a while ago when I dreamed of you, and you told me you loved me? I was wearing some equipment, and it measured where the activity was happening in my brain. It turned out that it was located in the left parahippocampal gyrus, a section of the human brain that has been linked to psychic powers and to memory. It’s the part of my brain that was altered to make me, well, powerful. I don’t know if the Kryptonian brain has a similar area, but perhaps you could monitor your brain the next time you dream to see where the activity is centred,” Lena suggested._

_“I will ask my aunt, Lara. No-one knows more of Kryptonian physiology than she does. And she never lets anyone forget it,” Kara said, laughing as she remembered her conversation from that day._

_“Like mother, like son, huh?” Lena asked, smiling._

_“Exactly. I will tell her you said that – she will like you very much, I think,” Kara said._

_“I’m sure if she’s anything like you, I will love her,” Lena said, smile fading, her eyes intent on Kara’s. “Kara, can I…”_

_Kara nodded, moving closer, and once again she found her lips just brushing Lena’s. It felt like a shock to the central nervous system, setting her skin and nerve endings on fire, fire that was deep red like Rao’s light. It felt more than simply good. It felt_ **right** , _in a way that Mon-El and James and the others’ kisses never had. Right, as if this was the one person in the entire universe who was made to fit with Kara in that way._

_Kara felt a familiar pulling, and she drew back from Lena reluctantly._

_“Until next time, my love,” Kara said, smiling sadly._

_“Come home to me soon, Kara Zor-El,” Lena said, and then she faded away into swirling mists, and Kara, too was gone, outwards into nothing._


	8. Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang decide to tell Kal-El what's happening, and Lena makes some tough decisions, while the governments of Earth meet to decide how to deal with the upcoming arrival of the .
> 
> *Minor character death in this chapter*

* * *

“I think it’s time to tell Kal-El,” Lena said, without preamble, as she landed in the DEO and walked up to Alex and J’onn.

 

“Good morning to you too, Lena,” Alex said, arms crossed.

 

“Sorry. I had another dream. We talked, a lot. I need to see the President, J’onn, but first we have to tell Kal-El what’s happening. His _parents_ are coming to Earth. Even if they don’t stay in our Solar System, he gets to meet his fellow Kryptonians, gets to meet his biological parents for the first time ever. I know your reasons for keeping it between us until now, J’onn. But he needs to know.”

 

“Okay, Lena. I’ll arrange a meet with Kal-El, and ensure that the President is aware that we have information for her,” J’onn said, in his customary rumble.

 

“Thank you, J’onn,” Lena said, gratefully. She took his hand for a moment, transmitting the PC sections of her dream, and he nodded, staring into space.

 

“I think they’ll be here in approximately two weeks, give or take,” he said, and star maps whizzed through his mind as Lena looked on, entranced. Sometimes she forgot that J’onn was ancient by Earth standards, and that he truly was more alien than he looked. He looked down at her, winking, and Lena smiled at him easily. One good thing about telepathy was that it allowed you to be open and honest in a way that speech didn’t allow for. Since Kara’s apparent death, Lena had somehow found an easy camaraderie with these people that she didn’t think she’d ever have.

 

“You wanna go to your place and spar?” Alex asked, referring to the other DEO facility.

 

“Sure,” Lena said. She needed the activity, truth be told. Since she woke up that morning, she felt like she had ants in her pants.

 

Two hours later, they were both exhausted, sitting on the edges of what Winn insisted on calling the ‘Fight club’. Lena was drinking a huge bottle of soda. She needed to eat, and was beginning to wonder how Kara got anything done if she was this hungry all the time.

 

“So, what did she tell you?” Alex asked, wiping sweat from the back of her neck.

 

“She told me that they’re planning to colonise one of Saturn or Jupiter’s moons, and that they are intending to use their abilities to mine diamonds from either or both planets, and they plan to share them with Earth. For use as jewellery and communication, and for use as drives for interstellar travel. They can change the properties of diamonds, apparently, presumably with their strength or maybe even their technology.”

 

“Wow,” Alex said, taking a deep breath. “Is it just me or does it suddenly feel… real?”

 

“Yeah, it does. There are real, live aliens out there, on their way to propose an alliance with us. And I have the power to communicate with one of them, even though they’re still over 13 light years away,” Lena said, shaking her head. “When I thought about space, about exploring, about meeting aliens, I’d always thought about being an astronaut or maybe even building a ship. But communication with them in this way… it never crossed my mind.”

 

“Yeah. None of this is what I expected. Did you talk about anything else?” Alex asked, pulling a protein bar from her bag and throwing one to Lena.

 

“I told her about what happened with me, after she… and she told me about the Dominators. She said she met them on Earth 1? I don’t think I even know what that means,” Lena said, confused. “She mentioned them because one of the offers the Kryptonians intend to make is defence of Earth. She said the Dominators tried to invade this Earth 1.”

 

“You know what this means, don’t you?” Alex said, sitting up a little straighter. “You didn’t know about the Dominators before, did you? So that means that either you picked that out of my brain, or maybe Winn’s? Or you really have been speaking to her. I admit, I was sceptical at first, but I’m pretty convinced, now.”

 

“Yes, well – I don’t recall hearing that thought from anyone. I’ve only read your mind a handful of times, and always with permission. Usually I do it with random people, because it’s getting into people’s minds that I need practice with.”

 

“Okay. Colour me convinced,” Alex said, smiling. “She’s really out there.”

 

“Yeah,” Lena said, taking a deep breath. “She really is.”

 

They sat in calm silence for another half hour before they felt the need to leave.

 

Kal-El agreed to meet them at the Fortress the following morning, and Lena flew Alex up while J’onn took Maggie.

 

“Damn, this place is so cold,” Alex said, pulling her hood up and shrinking into the warm material of her coat.

 

“Yeah. Weirdly, I don’t feel it as much, anymore,” Lena said. “I wonder if it’s another manifestation of this power,” she flexed her arms, stretching. She didn’t really feel strain from carrying Alex, but she did have some stiffness in her joints.

 

“Okay. Officially hate you, Luthor,” Alex said, half-heartedly.

 

“That seems a bit strong,” Kal-El said, arriving with a ‘whoosh’.

 

“Hey, Clark,” Alex said, hugging Kara’s cousin. “You look good.”

 

“You too, Alex. And Maggie, hey. J’onn, obviously you look hot as ever. Lena, it’s great to see you,” Kal-El said, grinning.

 

“You’ve been spending way too much time with Lois,” J’onn said, chuckling.

 

“You might be right there. So, to what do I owe this honour?” Kal-El asked.

 

“You might want to sit, Clark,” Lena said, sitting on a nearby couch that looked supremely weird inside the crystal ice palace that Clark called home.

 

“Okay,” Clark said, looking from Lena to Alex.

 

He sat and the others followed, Maggie leaning carefully against a nearby pillar.

 

“There’s no easy way to say this, Clark, but… should I be the one telling him, guys?” Lena asked, suddenly realising that this might not be her place.

 

“Of course, Lena. We wouldn’t know anything about this if it wasn’t for you,” Alex protested. Maggie and J’onn nodded.

 

“Okay. So, you know I’ve developed powers, obviously. They’re not all physical. I can read minds – not Kryptonian, but humans and other aliens. And I have some sort of a dream-link thing. We’ve been measuring which parts of the brain are in play at any given time, and when I started having these particular dreams, we checked. It wasn’t a dream; it was a psychic event. A link.”

 

“Okay,” Kal said, confused. “A link with whom?”

 

“With Kara,” Lena said.

 

Kal’s jaw tightened. He looked from Lena’s sincere expression to J’onn’s stoic one, and Alex and Maggie’s sympathetic faces.

 

“Okay. Tell me more, about why you think these are real dreams.”

 

Lena explained. She told him almost everything, even telling him that she was in love with Kara, and that Kara reciprocating was one of the reasons she’d dismissed the dreams out of hand.

 

“But they are real, Kal-El. I swear to you, I would never have told you this if I wasn’t sure. She told me things that I didn’t know before, like about her trip to Earth 1. Granted, I could have heard it from someone else’s mind, but I remember almost every time I’ve read someone’s mind and what I’ve seen. I doubt I would have forgotten something like that.”

 

Alex explained the process they’d gone through to check what the dreams really were, how they’d charted the activity and growth in Lena’s brain, and the fact that they had found faint signals coming from that sector of space that could indicate a small fleet of ships using the technology that Dream-Kara described.

 

“So you’re telling me that not only is Kara alive, but my entire family are alive too, because of this fail-safe that my uncle designed?” Kal asked, looking as if someone had just gut-punched him.

 

“Yes,” Lena said. She made sure that she met his eyes evenly.

 

“And Jor-El really thinks it’s possible.”

 

“More than that, my son, I believe it is much more likely than the other options,” Jor-El said, flashing into existence nearby. “There is no other scenario that would rationally explain Lena Luthor’s knowledge of the technology that my brother was working on before Krypton’s destruction. That information was contained only in the crystals sent with you, and in Zor-El’s private systems, which remain with him,” Jor-El confirmed.

 

Kal-El looked at the ghost of his father, a father he’d just learned wasn’t actually dead, and to Lena’s astonishment, he began to sob. He dropped his head into his hands and sobbed into them. Lena exchanged a startled look with Alex, who moved to Kal-El’s side, pulling him close. Lena knew that Alex didn’t particularly care for Kara’s cousin, but her natural empathy would never allow her to leave him in this state.

 

Lena sat on her hands uncomfortably, and Maggie stood, indicating a nearby doorway with a jut of her chin. Lena stood, following her, and they found a tiny kitchen holding all they needed to make some fresh tea. They did so in silence, bringing the tea back in and handing a cup to J’onn and then to Kal-El and Alex.

 

“I’m sorry, guys,” Kal-El said, wiping his eyes. “I didn’t realise how much losing Kara had hurt me. So finding out that she’s actually alive, and that she’s out there? With everyone else I thought was lost? It threw me for a loop. I’m sorry you had to see that.”

 

“Dude, shut the hell up, will you?” Maggie said, punching him lightly on the arm. “I’ve cried more at Grey’s Anatomy. We’re talking about a lost civilisation, about your parents and your cousin coming back from the dead. You’re entitled to get a little emotional.”

 

Kal choked out a surprised laugh.

 

“Thank you, Maggie. I can see why you chose this one, Alex. She’s perfect for you,” Kal said, smiling that million mega-watt smile that Lena had become so accustomed to seeing on Kara’s face.  It made her heart wrench, and she stifled a sob. She missed Kara so badly. J’onn stepped to her side, squeezing her shoulder, and she patted his hand gratefully.

 

They all parted ways shortly afterwards, promising to keep Kal-El in the loop for any future discoveries or information they might find.

 

“If the President needs me to speak to any of the other world leaders, to reassure them, I’d be more than happy to do so,” Kal said, before smiling and flying away through the Fortress roof.

 

Lena and J’onn dropped Alex and Maggie home, checking on Jeremiah’s progress before she left. He was in a DEO facility undergoing de-programming, and Eliza was spending as much time there as she could.

 

“The things they did to him, Lena. The things they made him do! I… it’s unbelievable, that there’s any part of him that’s still… him.”

 

Lena squeezed Alex’s arm gently. She’d stopped apologising for her family a while back when Maggie and Winn told her off for it. She’d reluctantly agreed, and now found it oddly freeing, to refuse to acknowledge that her family’s sins were her responsibility. Because they weren’t.

 

Lena took her leave of Alex and Maggie, and headed back to her penthouse. Lena showered and changed quickly before falling into bed and dropping off immediately. She had no dreams that night, much to her disappointment.

 

The meeting with the President happened over secure video two days later, and the President and Cat Grant confirmed that they were in active talks with most of Earth’s leaders concerning the arrival of the Kryptonians.

 

“I think the diamond thing might help, actually,” Cat said, tapping a finger on her lip. “Most of the countries we’ve spoken to have no reason to mistrust the Kryptonians – they’ve done nothing but help us, apart from those who came from that prison ship when Supergirl came out. But the idea of advancement in wealth and technology – that might make up the minds of the undecided.  Mentioning global warming will probably make things worse for some, but… leave that to me,” Cat said thoughtfully.

 

“I’ll be in touch with Superman soon,” the President confirmed. “There’s a closed session of the United Nations that I’d like him to address.”

 

They left it at that, and Lena flew to the Fortress afterwards. Winn had confirmed that he’d found some faint signals that he thought might be coming from Kara’s fleet. Lena wanted to find them, to see them with her own eyes. Or her mind’s eye, rather, since it was a telepathic ability and not a physical one.

 

She exchanged pleasantries with Jor-El, imagining meeting the man in the flesh in a couple of weeks, and they got to it. He worked out approximately where the ships would be in the night sky, and Lena searched the area with her mind. She had found nothing but dust and rocks, when she suddenly thought about how she initiated her version of telepathy. Emotions.

 

She thought about Kara, about how much the woman had always made her feel special. She was so beautiful, and even before Lena had any inkling that Kara might care about her in a more-than-friendly way, she was in love with her. She was happiness, sunshine and love wrapped up in a beautiful package.

 

Immediately, her eyes pulled several degrees across the night sky, and she was able to discern something moving against the endless black of space. She’d always thought of space as being full of stars, but the distances concerned were so huge, so dizzying, that it looked more like a sea of ink than a sea of stars.

 

 _There._ Another ship. They were sleek, black, and well designed. They were moving faster than light, Lena knew that intellectually, but they appeared to her mind’s eye to be moving slowly. Astronauts. Starsailors. She’d always loved that name for those who traversed space, regardless of its inaccuracy.

 

“I can see them,” she said, in a shaky voice.

 

“Where, Lena?” Jor-El asked, almost gently.

 

She pointed out exactly where it was in the night sky, her mind’s eye charting the huge distances between the fleet and the closest star. Jor-El worked for a moment, and then a disk popped out of a nearby crystal console.

 

“This contains the co-ordinates and an extrapolation of their likely route. Time of arrival is estimated at 16 days, 6 hours, 34 minutes.”

 

Lena exhaled loudly. She could see Kara’s ship. Could Kara sense her? Was she sleeping now, or was she working on one of the various projects the Kryptonians had undertaken to stave off the boredom of life on board a spacecraft?

 

“I love you, Kara Zor-El,” she breathed, and she swore she heard a whispered reply.

 

_“Khap zhao rrip, Lena-te.”_

 

***

 

The session with the United Nations was early the following week, and reportedly went well. The leaders of a number of other countries were invited to the first session of what was being called the “Earth Council”, and Lena and the DEO were asked to be there to answer any questions. Superman gave the information they’d collected, carefully edited so that no-one would have quite enough information to launch any sort of attack against the Kryptonians. The information included pictures from several of Earth’s orbiting telescopes which showed the Kryptonian ships approaching.

 

They were close to being in communications range, if Earth had had any technology that could receive Kryptonian messages. That was Lena’s next job – to try to establish a way to communicate with more than just Kara, in a more reliable medium than dreams.

 

Lena was asked to give a brief speech to confirm how her link with Supergirl had come about, which was carefully edited to leave out any mention of love or soulmates. To her surprise, none of those present seemed in any way sceptical of her account, perhaps because they’d brought Jor-El’s hologram along to answer selected questions.

 

“That went a lot better than I thought it would,” Lena said, as she and J’onn were leaving the hall. “Did you sense anything from any of the delegates?”

 

“There are a few who are concerned that the Kryptonians are planning to conquer Earth. There are several there who were planted from anti-alien groups like Cadmus. One of those was thinking about your mother’s face. I had the Secret Service pick her up, you’ll be relieved to know.”

 

“I am relieved,” Lena said, scratching at her forehead absently. “Speaking of the wicked witch, has she shown any signs at all of wanting to talk?”

 

“None. She eats some of what we give her, uses the facilities, but other than reading books she does nothing else,” J’onn said.

 

“Have you read her mind recently?”

 

“No. I was planning to do it soon. But perhaps you could, instead. It would be good to know if she is aware of the Kryptonians’ approach and if she has managed to get a message to anyone. And any plans she might have.”

 

Lena nodded, suddenly feeling anxious. She felt a sudden need to talk to her mother, to look her in the eye and find out what was going on in her brain. To protect Kara.

 

The world blinked and Lena found herself just outside the door to the DEO cells, next to a startled guard who raised his gun immediately.

 

“Relax, Lynas,” she said, shaking her head. “I have got to get a handle on that.”

 

“Miss Luthor, I’m going to need you to wait until I can speak to Agent Danvers,” the guard said.

 

“Of course, Lynas. Can I sit?” she asked, suddenly tired. He nodded warily and called Alex on his radio.

 

“She’s on her way, Ma’am. Can I get you some water?” he asked, solicitously.

 

“That would be lovely, thank you,” Lena said, beaming.

 

Lynas gave her a paper cup filled with cold water, which she gulped down greedily.

 

A door opened at the other end of the corridor and Alex Danvers strode in.

 

“Lena, J’onn told me you were just with him in the Hague,” Alex said, shaking her head.

 

“Yeah. About that…” Lena said, rubbing at the back of her neck. “Do you remember that night when I realised the dreams weren’t dreams, and Winn called me?”

 

“Oh,” Alex said. “You just popped up here? So what is it, some sort of teleportation?” Alex asked, sceptically.

 

“I suppose so,” Lena said, shrugging.

 

Alex pulled a small device from her belt, and held it out. Lena laughed, holding out her hand and allowing Alex to scan her with LCorp’s alien detection device.

 

It showed green, and both Lynas and Alex visibly relaxed.

 

“One more thing,” Alex said, holding up a finger. She pulled a lighter from another pocket of her tac belt, and held it up to Lena’s hand, a rudimentary method of detecting the presence of a green or white Martian. Lena sat still as nothing happened.

 

“You happy now?” she asked, grinning.

 

“Yeah,” Alex said. “Lynas, you can stand down. Now, this power could really prove useful, Lena. We’re gonna need to work on controlling it.”

 

“I think you’re right. And I think the key is emotion, again. In this case, need. I felt a strong need to talk to Lillian and read her, to find out if she knows anything about the Kryptonians.”

 

Lena felt a small surge of panic, and quickly realised that it wasn’t hers, and nor was it Alex’s. The panic was coming from Lynas.

 

Lena touched Alex’s arm, transmitting her discovery as slowly as possible so as to avoid incapacitating Alex with too much information. Alex nodded carefully, and clearly thought. _“Can you restrain him?”_

 

Lena nodded, binding the man gently with compressed bands of air that he wouldn’t feel until he tried to move. Alex turned, pulling her gun in one fluid movement.

 

“Agent Lynas, hands up. Interlace your fingers behind your head. Do it now.”

 

Lena loosened the bonds on his hands enough that he could move them upwards, and Alex cuffed him roughly, radio-ing for assistance. A couple of burly DEO guards were there in seconds, and they took the shaking man away for questioning.

 

“Well, I guess that answers some of my questions,” Lena sighed. “I still want to go see her, though. Would you accompany me? Better to be safe, and all that.”

 

“Sure,” Alex said. She replaced her gun in the holster, but left the holster unclipped.

 

Lena grabbed a chair, and Alex stood behind her, looking intimidating as always.

 

“Ah. Agent Danvers and my daughter. I was wondering if I would see you again, darling,” Lillian said, turning around to face them. Despite her surroundings, she looked elegant and poised, as always.

 

“Lillian,” Lena said, inclining her head slightly. She saw her mother’s forehead crease a little, and concentrated on that tiny spike of annoyance to slide into her mind. “It’s a pleasure to see you, as always. Your friend Lynas says hello.”

 

Lillian’s eyebrow twitched almost imperceptibly at that. Her mind, however, was racing. Lena was impressed at the calm her mother projected when a storm of emotion like this was going on inside. Images of Lynas’ face – Lynas Luthor, by birth, a distant cousin – flashed through her mind, along with pictures of others that Lena had seen just an hour before. Diplomats and politicians. If not actively a part of Cadmus, some of them were definitely Cadmus sympathisers. Lena began to take a careful note of names and faces, relying on her memory to allow her to write them down later.

 

“Lynas was nothing. One of a thousand. One of a million faceless people, a resistance you can’t possibly even conceive of.”

 

“4,927,” Lena said, flatly.

 

Lillian’s eyes widened.

 

“I beg your pardon?”

 

“That’s the exact number of Cadmus agents, diplomats, politicians and other supporters who’ve given money or equipment to Cadmus in the last ten years,” Lena said, without blinking.

 

“So it was the DEO who raided our facilities. Very good, Lena,” Lillian said, looking wary and a little impressed.

 

“Thanks, mom,” Lena said, trying to keep control of her sarcasm. “I understand that you haven’t been speaking to anyone. Are they treating you well?”

 

Lillian’s nostrils flared.

 

“I am being held prisoner by the alien commander of a pro-alien government agency. Unlawfully. What do you think?” Lillian asked, scathing.

 

“Actually, your imprisonment isn’t unlawful. I saw the papers myself. The President considers you an extraordinary threat to the wellbeing of humans and aliens alike, and gave you over to the custody of the DEO. Your trial date is yet to be set, but you are being given exactly what you deserve, mother.”

 

“You are as bad as they are, Lena. Can’t you see that they are gearing up for an invasion, ready to take us as slaves? Just like the Daxamites. And still you defend them.”

 

“I defend them because I believe they deserve the same chance as anyone else, mother. I defend them because your idea of diplomacy is to poison innocent civilians, and to murder people I care about,” Lena said, barely holding back tears.

 

“They’re not people, Lena. They’re parasites, and they are coming for us. They’ll be here in weeks! Why won’t you stand by my side?” Lillian asked, holding one hand out, pleading.

 

Lena felt Alex growling behind her, and she mentally sent some soothing, calming thoughts to the woman.

 

“Mother, what are you talking about?”

 

“An invasion force is headed this way. You know that as well as I do,” Lillian said, sighing. “A fleet of Kryptonian ships, one of which, if her ‘cousin’ is to believed, contains your little girlfriend. So stop playing games with me.”

 

Lena concentrated, digging into Lillian’s mind a bit further, to find the source of her information. It was a shadowy figure, a tall man. Lex.

 

“Where are you even getting this from, mother?”

 

“You’re not the only one with friends in high places,” Lillian said, smugly. A flash of the President’s face popped up in her mind, along with a small woman with graying black hair. She was Lex’s source, and Lillian and Lex still had a way to communicate.

 

Lena nodded.

 

“I see. I think you’ve been misinformed, mother. Kara died. I know you know that. I tried to resuscitate her. Much as I wish it wasn’t true, I’m afraid it is. And as to fleets of Kryptonian ships – where, exactly, do you suppose they’ve been hiding for the last 38 years? All of the information we have about Krypton suggests that they were an insular society, that they didn’t even have ships for the most part. The pods that the Supers came in were the exception, not the rule.”

 

Lillian’s face flickered, and Lena felt uncertainty emanating from her.

 

“Before you go stealing nukes from Russia, Mom, you might want to check that your informant isn’t trolling you. According to the aliens I’ve spoken to recently, the Luthor name is more likely to be laughed at than feared, these days. And Cadmus is a joke, now that your people are in prison.”

 

“Not all of them,” Lillian said smugly. Again, she helpfully thought the names of some of the high-ranking members of Cadmus who’d escaped the DEO’s net.  Something told Lena, however, that it would be better to wait and observe those people for a while, rather than pouncing. Lillian didn’t know the extent of her abilities, and she wanted it to stay that way.

 

“Well, Mom. It’s been fun. But I have things to do, and I’m sure you have at least one section of wall that you haven’t entirely catalogued, yet.”

 

“There’s still time,” Lillian said. “They’re coming, Lena. And they will enslave us all.”

 

“Even if that were true, Mom, what would you have me do about it? If there are Kryptonians out there, how would we even turn them back?” Lena asked, exasperated.

 

“With you and Lex by my side, we can accomplish anything, Lena. You know that. Look at what we did with the Daxamites! All we need is some Kryptonite, and we can replicate the device we used last time. If that doesn’t work, there are ways, Lena. We can do this, together, as a family!”

 

Lillian was standing, hands out, imploring Lena to help.

 

“Mother, I’m sorry that you are so horribly haunted by aliens. What they did to deserve your ire, I don’t know. And maybe there are Kryptonians on their way here, and maybe we might be able to keep them out of our atmosphere if we built a replica of the lead device. But maybe they could destroy us from orbit. They had technology we could only dream of. I might be a genius, but I’m no match for a civilisation that was growing old and wise while we were in caves. I suggest you worry about taking responsibility for the lives you’ve taken. The Earth will be fine.”

 

Lillian’s eyes flashed with anger, and Lena felt her emotions flatten, deaden. Lena shivered at the merciless suppression of emotion. She _felt_ Lillian’s decision. She, Lena, was going to have to die. There were three people in the DEO who worked for Lex, and one of them was to take Lena down the next time she came in. Lena took a deep breath, concentrating on a part of Lillian’s brain where some of the vessels were already damaged by age and stress. She scratched at her temple again absently, and started to scrape away the wall of one of the more degraded vessels in Lillian’s brain. It was kill or be killed. Not only that, to _not_ do this was to allow her mother and Lex to try their best to kill Kara and her people when they arrived.

 

Lena allowed herself to be led out of the holding cell area, a concerned Alex talking to her.

 

“Are you okay, Lena? You looked like you saw a ghost, there, for a minute.”

 

“Do you know these agents?” Lena asked, touching Alex’s hand and flashing up pictures.

 

“Yes,” Alex said, grimly. “She’s going to have you killed?”

 

“Apparently so. She was giving me this one last chance to be a Luthor. I think you might want to employ a few more telepaths, Alex, and have them do random scans. 4 traitors in one day, and those were just the ones she was thinking about. There could be more. I’m still a novice at this.”

 

Alex nodded, and they stepped into the elevator and headed to the control centre. Lena scratched at her temple again, and at that precise moment, the aneurysm that had been growing inside the brain of Alexander Luthor, resident of Cell Block X, exploded. He was dead before his body hit the floor. When Superman and the Green Martian searched his cell later that week, they found no fewer than 4 cell phones and evidence linking 9 of his guards and the prison warden to various crimes on his behalf.

 

No one mourned at his funeral, not even his sister, Lena.

 

“I said goodbye to him a long time ago. About the time I realised he was trying to have me killed,” Lena said, flatly.

 

Alex and Maggie stayed with her that night, keeping vigil for the boy who Lena had once loved.

 

If anyone suspected anything when Lillian Luthor died less than a week later from a similar aneurysm, they said nothing.

 

“Looks like it was a hereditary condition. You should be fine, Lena,” Alex said, checking the results of a CT scan she’d just performed. “If it was genetic, it was passed through the maternal, not the paternal side.”

 

“That’s a relief,” Lena said, sounding anything but relieved.

 

That night, she dreamed of Kara.

 

_“Lena! You’re here! Lena, we’re close. Our nav computer says it will be 7 days, give or take a few hours. We are close enough to Sol now that I can feel my powers starting to wake up!”_

_Kara was bouncing up and down on her feet, and the look on her face was so joyful and sweet that Lena instantly felt better. This was why she’d done what she did with her mother and Lex. For this, for this unbridled joy and sweetness. Kara Zor-El was goodness personified, and Lena could not let that light die out._  

 

_“God, Kara. I love you so much. You are incredible,” Lena said, moving to Kara’s side and holding her as tightly as she dared._

_“Hey, hey. What’s wrong, Lena-te?”_

_“I killed them, Kara. I killed my family.”_

_“What’s going on, darling?” Kara asked, pulling Lena down to sit next to her on a bed that appeared from nowhere._

_“I went to see Lex, and Lillian. At different times. I read her mind – his was just a cesspool of crazy – and I managed to get information on Cadmus and Jeremiah. We shut down most of their operations. And then, after I talked to the world council, I decided to speak to her again. She was… her usual self. But when she realised I wasn’t going to help her destroy you and your people – she got word of it through some crooked DEO agents and Lex’s guards – she decided to have me killed. I felt it, the moment she decided. So I decided that I would have to end her life, instead. Hers and Lex’s, because they would never have rested until you and all of your people were dead. I’m so sorry, Kara. Please, don’t hate me.”_

_Kara wrapped her up in that way she had, where a person felt like their whole body, their whole soul, was being cradled in loving arms._

_“I could never hate you, Lena-te. I am so sorry you had to make that decision. I couldn’t have. My parents did some questionable things, but I could never have done what you did. I’ve never been half as strong as you, Lena. You’re amazing. You amazed me from the moment I met you,” Kara murmured._

_Lena let herself cry, let the grief spill out of her. Her family were gone, yes, but she had a new family now, a family who cared about her unconditionally. Kara wasn’t even on Earth, and she’d still managed to change Lena’s life completely._

_“I love you so much,” Kara whispered, holding her even closer. “You are beautiful and stronger than anyone I know. Just remember, my love. We are stronger together, and you have people. Alex, Winn, James, J’onn, Maggie. They’re all your people.”_

_Lena didn’t have the heart to tell her that James was in Metropolis now, that he’d left almost immediately after Kara’s funeral. That was up to him to explain, not her._

_“Thank you, Kara. Your friends and family – they’re amazing. I would never have survived without them.”_

_“I’m glad that they were there for you, :zrhueaio,” Kara said, pulling back and smiling at Lena. “I think they must have known, somehow. That I would be coming home and that I needed you to be there, waiting.”_

_“I am. Waiting. And I’m yours, Kara. Whatever you need from me. If the Earth Council doesn’t agree to allow you to stay, I will go wherever you do, you know that, don’t you?”_

_They lay back on the bed and Lena put her head on Kara’s chest._

_“I do, love. I feel it. But I do not think it will come to that. Kal-El seemed to be optimistic, didn’t he? And you are, too. I can feel it.”_

_“I am,” Lena admitted. “I feel like it will work out. But I don’t want to hold out hope for something that might not happen. So I want you to know. If you’ll have me, I’m yours, Kara Zor-El. Heart, body, mind, soul.”_

_Kara turned her head and leaned down to kiss Lena, her lips soft and slightly dry._

_“And I am yours, :zrhueiao. Always. In this life and in the next. I love you.”_

_They kissed until the dream pulled them apart, and they held each other’s eyes until they couldn’t see, anymore. Lena slipped into sleep, into dreams of comfort and safety, of blue eyes that filled her heart with joy._


	9. Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena takes on a mission, and a heavy burden. Something goes badly wrong. In the meantime, Kara and Lara investigate the dreams Kara's been sharing with Lena.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of death in this chapter, and some morally questionable actions on Lena's part. Read with caution.

Kara was uncomfortable. After she spoke to Lena about how her powers worked, Lara had decided that she would be the first Kryptonian to prove or disprove the theory of true-dreams between soulmates.

 

“Just relax, Kara darling. It does not even hurt, I’ve had this test a number of times myself.”

 

Kara sighed, shifting uncomfortably. The yellow sun was awakening her powers again, but the radiation wasn’t strong enough to make her feel strong, like it usually did. What she actually felt was that someone had released a plague of ants into her bone marrow. Her nerves were on fire.

 

“You are not the only one struggling, Kara Zor-El. We are all feeling the effects. It will be a few days more. If you wish, I can put you under sedation for a few days,” Lara said, looking down at Kara, eyes crinkled in concern.

 

“No. It is fine, Aunt Lara. I don’t… I need to be around, in case Lena dreams with me again.”

 

“So be it, Little One. Now, stop squirming or I will go and get Astra.”

 

Kara immediately stilled. Astra had a wicked way of finding the most ticklish spots on her body.

 

“Better.”

 

The machine scanned Kara’s brain, almost at the cellular level, and Lara watched the monitor carefully, muttering to herself as she did so.

 

“There is a little more activity here, in this ancient part of our brain. The humans call it the limbic system. Ours is not quite the same, but to have activity of this sort here – it is not entirely normal.”

 

Kara nodded.

 

“Do you think there is a way to work out if that is how I am seeing her?” she asked.

 

“I believe so. I have a portable scanner. Put it on your temple before you sleep, and it will measure the activity when you sleep. If you dream normally, that part will be no more active than usual. If they are true dreams, I will need to investigate further,” Lara said, handing Kara a small device with a blinking blue light on it.

 

“Thank you, Aunt Lara,” Kara said, nodding. It would be good to get some answers.

 

That night, she dreamt of Lena telling her that she’d killed Lex and Lillian, to stop them from killing Kara and her people. In the morning, Lara came to find her.

 

“From what I can tell, my darling… you had a true dream last night. Do you concur?” Lara asked, eyes dancing with excitement.

 

“I believe so. My… Lena, she told me that the Earth has formed a council to meet with our people. She also told me that she was forced to kill her own family,” Kara said sadly. “They had plans to kill us all, or at the very least, to banish us from Earth.”

 

“I see. She is a strong woman, this Lena of yours. To kill for you?”

 

“I… I feel so bad for her. She’s had to do such awful things, because her family have forced her into it. I hate that I am the reason for this evil she’s had to do.”

 

“If they do not welcome us, Kara, then we will offer your Lena a place with us. She has the heart of a Kryptonian,” Lara said.

 

“Thank you, Aunt Lara,” Kara said, smiling through her tears. Lara removed the scanner from her temple gently, and then kissed the mark it left behind.

 

The next three or four nights, Lena appeared in her dreams, asking if they could just cuddle and not talk. Kara nodded, since Lena seemed troubled, and she didn’t have any more information to impart apart from their position, which the DEO were monitoring closely. They cuddled up, sharing occasional kisses, and fell ‘asleep’ inside the dream.

 

The next night, Lena didn’t appear.

 

***

 

After Lillian’s death, Lena, Alex and J’onn spent hours poring over evidence. They were able to arrange the arrests of around half of the suspected Cadmus supporters. The others, however, fled after the first few were arrested.

 

Lena didn’t tell anyone else, but she had spoken briefly to the Junior Aide of a Senator who had disappeared, using her mental abilities to make the guards forget she’d ever been there. The Aide’s mind was a maelstrom of fear, but Lena was able to find out where the Senator herself had gone. There was yet another underground warehouse/lab that Cadmus and other anti-alien organisations were holed up in, trying to find a way to destroy the Kryptonian fleet before they arrived.

 

It was the dead of night when she infiltrated the facility. She’d been working with Alex to develop and control her teleportation power, and it was finally reliable. She popped up outside, first, and listened carefully to the heartbeats inside. 86. That was how many people she might have to kill.

 

She’d also been practising another mental ability – the ability to imprint commands inside another human’s brain. It was one of J’onn’s tricks, and she’d been uncomfortable trying it, to say the least. She experimented first on the Senator’s Aide, telling him to hop on one foot for a minute and then to forget she’d been there. She watched him from outside of the building, counting down the 60 seconds as he hopped. Just as her internal alarm beeped, the man sat down on the bed in his cell, taking out a book and reading it. So far as she could tell, there was no lasting damage. And if there was, it couldn’t happen to a nicer man than this one, who’d thrown a party when news of Supergirl’s death was announced.  

 

Outside the facility, she took a deep breath and walked up to the guards at the front door. They, too, were a threat, if they couldn’t be re-programmed.

 

“Excuse me, gentlemen. Do you have any idea where the nearest garage is? My car broke down about a half-mile that way,” she said, with a winning smile.

 

She wrapped them up quickly in bonds of compressed, hardened air. She placed a hand on one man’s head, then the other. After a moment of head-shaking, they threw down their weapons and other equipment and walked away. They were about to turn themselves in to National City police, giving full confessions as to their activities so far. From what Lena knew of this ability, new though it was, they would never be able to act on any anti-alien impulses they had in future.

 

Lena stepped inside using the key card one of the guards had left in his belt. There were no guards on the inside of the hallway. She followed the minds she could sense, and opened a door into a room full of scientists.

 

“Who are you?” one of them demanded. Lena wrapped them up, gagging the ones who wouldn’t stop talking, and she carefully checked each mind, imposing her will on theirs. One of the scientists wouldn’t stand down, his mind showing her images of a dead little boy – his son – after Superman saved Metropolis from a rampaging alien. The only good alien was a dead alien, to him.

 

She fought him for another minute, before whispering a command to him.

 

_“Die.”_

 

She held the man’s hand as his own mind turned on his body, switching off each vital system until his chest stopped moving. She wiped her eyes, stood, and moved onto the next scientist.

 

She reprogrammed 2/3 of the people in the building. The others, she whispered quietly to, and they stood there for a few shorts moments until they couldn’t stand, falling to their knees, and then onto their faces. Their deaths were gentle, at least. When she scanned the facility again, she could find only animal minds. She coaxed them, gently, to leave the area, and then she set the facility aflame, burning through the cement and metal structure until nothing remained.

 

She knelt for a long time outside, and sent up a prayer to whichever God might be listening, asking for forgiveness for what she’d done. That night, she cried in Kara’s arms inside their joint dream. Kara just held her close, asking no questions, and Lena had never loved the woman more than she did right then.

 

The following night she blinked herself into another shadowy facility in Germany, and she spent her evening doing the same things she’d done in National City. That led her to another facility in St Petersburg the same night. The following night she made her way to the Sahara Desert where there was reportedly a huge cell of anti-alien terrorists. It was there, deep underneath the Sahara, that things went badly wrong.

 

By the time she arrived inside the Sahara facility, she was exhausted and distraught at the lives she had taken. She didn’t hear or feel the metahuman approach – he had the power to bend light, to be invisible, and the same abilities allowed him to appear invisible to telepathy. He hit Lena with a metal bar, once and then again, and she only had enough time to attempt setting the facility aflame before she blinked out. This time, she was unconscious before she reached the other side.

 

***

 

“Director, the only person I know with those sorts of powers is you,” Maggie protested. “So would you care to tell me why I have over 90 Cadmus agents and scientists, not to mention a senator and three congressmen, who’ve turned themselves in, repenting their crimes?”

 

“Detective Sawyer,” J’onn said, patiently. “I have been here all night with Agent Danvers, and a number of staff. I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about. But I would like to.”

 

“But – you’re a shapeshifter,” Maggie whispered. “So you could’ve…”

 

“What? Made a double of myself? You know that’s not one of my abilities, Detective. Come on. Let’s have some coffee and you can tell me what’s going on.”

 

Just around that same time, the DEO received notification of a Cadmus facility that had burned to the ground with more than 30 humans inside. 

 

Alex had the thought first, but didn’t voice it until the same thing happened in Berlin and then St Petersburg the next night.

 

“What is it, Alex?” J’onn asked, taking in her frown.

 

“I haven’t seen Lena since Lillian. You don’t suppose…”

 

“This could be her?” J’onn frowned. “Yes, I do. Her powers seem to be limited only by what she can imagine to be possible. And she knows that I possess the power to influence minds and to change or remove memories. She might very well have tried replicating that power. It would not surprise me at all if it were her.”

 

“What… should we be doing something about this, J’onn?” Alex asked. She was chewing on her hair, a clear sign of anxiety.

 

“Well, given that we know nothing for sure… we do nothing. We just monitor the situation. If it is Miss Luthor, she’s clearly trying to go about this as ethically as she knows how. And while I cannot agree with her methods, she is protecting humanity as much as she is protecting aliens. Cadmus and their ilk are terrorists, and if they are left to operate as they wish, they will start a war and both sides will suffer, but humans most of all. Astra In-Ze and her people developed shielding for Kryptonite, and I’m sure they will manufacture those shields again if they are forced to. It will be humans who suffer during any attacks, and we can plead ignorance as to Lena’s actions if and when it comes to light,” J’onn said. “We know nothing for sure.”

 

Alex nodded.

 

Maggie was going to kill her, but there was no way she was going to explain this until Kara was home. Maggie might end up detecting too well. The ‘disappearance’ of these groups could only benefit everyone involved. Aside from the family and friends of those who Lena felt she had to kill, of course.

 

Alex shivered, irrationally glad that it wasn’t her who had to make those decisions. Oddly, she was a little bit envious that she couldn’t do this for Kara. If it was necessary, she would burn down the world to protect her sister. Lena could probably do that, literally.

 

The following night, a massive facility under the Sahara Desert was destroyed with almost all of its people inside.

 

“This is not her MO,” J’onn said, eyes narrowing.

 

“I know. That was, like, 400 people?” Alex said, stricken.

 

“Yes. I’m going to call Superman, and see if we can locate Lena Luthor. We need to have a talk.”

 

They pinged Lena’s phone, finding it at the LCorp offices, along with her DEO earpiece. Kal-El and J’onn flew to the Sahara, finding the remains of a huge facility with a lab and hundreds of burned bodies underground.

 

It was just then that J’onn felt something stirring at the back of his mind. Like a consciousness, a feeling of someone trying to awaken.

 

“Kal, scan for anything… unusual. I can sense something, but I don’t know where she is. X-ray vision, 360 degrees,” J’onn said, searching through the rubble with his own enhanced vision.

 

He was scanning past the motionless bodies and weapons and huge vats of chemicals when he heard Kal shout.

 

“She’s about 40ft up, encased in solid rock. There’s some sort of forcefield keeping her from being crushed,” Kal said.

 

J’onn looked where Kal pointed, finding just what he’d described. A shimmering oval of energy containing Lena.

 

“I’ll have to get her,” J’onn said. “Meet me up above?”

 

Kal nodded and disappeared with a loud ‘swoosh’.  

 

J’onn concentrated, phasing through the solid rock and pockets of sand carefully until he found Lena. He could hear her heart beating from this distance, but she looked as if she’d been burned, and there was blood on the back of her skull.

 

J’onn phased carefully through the force field, lifting her and adjusting his own body’s field to include her, and then he rose up through the rock.

 

“Can you take her, Kal? You’re faster than I am. Straight to the DEO infirmary.”

 

Superman nodded, taking Lena’s limp body from J’onn, and he took off at speed. J’onn heard the sonic boom as Kal accelerated past the speed of sound.

 

J’onn went back to the underground facility and was surprised when a young man appeared in front of him, as if from nowhere.

 

“Who are you?” J’onn asked, standing up to his full height, and the young man quaked before him.

 

“Did you find her? The woman?” he asked, in heavily-accented English.

 

“We did. Now, who are you?” J’onn asked.

 

“Ibrahim. I live nearby with my family, but the people here in this place, they heard that I was… different, and they locked me away.”

 

“What makes you different, Ibrahim?” J’onn asked.

 

“I can hide myself. From people’s eyes and from their minds. The lady, she was touching people and they froze in place, throwing down their weapons. I didn’t know if she was a friend or not. My guards, they just walked away when she touched them. I was trying to get past her to the exit, but I thought she’d seen me and I hit her with a piece of metal. The place exploded in fire, then. It was my fault. I hurt her and she struck back. She was persuading these people not to go ahead with their plans. I hurt her, and I am so sorry.”

 

“It’s okay, Ibrahim. May I touch your face?” J’onn asked.

 

Ibrahim nodded nervously.

 

J’onn touched the young man’s face, reading through his mind. He was telling the truth. He had panicked, and in doing so he had caused Lena’s abilities to erupt in all directions.

 

“How did you escape without burns?” J’onn asked, taking his hand from Ibrahim’s face.

 

“I used my cloak, the cloak that hides me. I had to use more than I ever used before, but it kept the fire away from me until I could get out. I’ve been coming back every day to search for her.”

 

“She was up there, in the rock. You would not have found her,” J’onn said. “But thank you for trying. She’s on her way to hospital, now. With luck, she will be fine.”

 

“Thank you, Mr Alien,” Ibrahim said. “I will pray for her recovery.”

 

“Thank you, Ibrahim. Thanks to you I know what really happened here.”

 

“You are most welcome. Did you remove the bomb already, sir?” Ibrahim said, puffing his chest out with pride.

 

“No. Do you know where it is?” J’onn asked, trying to remain calm.

 

“I will take you,” Ibrahim said. He led J’onn under piles of rubble and equipment where they found a huge bomb, over a metre in diameter. It was well-shielded, but from the colour of the explosives, J’onn could tell that they were mixed with Kryptonite.

 

“Thank you, Ibrahim. I will send a team to dismantle it. In the meantime, if you need to get a hold of me, call.”

 

J’onn fished his backup cellphone from a pocket, handing it to the young man and showing him which option to use. He left the boy there inside the cavern, trusting that he knew what he was doing.

When he arrived at the DEO, it was a hive of activity. It had been since Lena had begun her night raids across the globe. Aliens from all over the Milky Way and neighbouring galaxies had been found in the various labs, and now needed to be assessed to see if they were threats before arranging new homes and jobs.

 

“Agent Vasquez, where is Superman?” J’onn asked, switching forms as he strode through the corridors.

 

“Infirmary, sir,” Vasquez answered, efficient as always.

 

J’onn carried on, making his way to the infirmary quickly where he found Alex and Dr Hamilton treating Lena Luthor’s burns.

 

“How is she?” J’onn asked. Superman stepped out of the corner and nodded at J’onn.

 

“I think she’s okay,” Alex said. “She took a nasty blow to the head, but I think her powers kicked in quickly enough to heal at least some of the damage. I suspect that, once she wakes up, the rest will follow. For now we’re just going to keep using the Rigellian mud slime so the burns don’t hurt.”

 

“Excellent. Dr Hamilton, could you give us a moment?” J’onn asked.

 

“Of course,” the doctor said, nodding as she left. She closed the infirmary door behind her as she went.

 

“Lena didn’t deliberately kill all of the people in the facility. She was attacked by a frightened metahuman who was being held captive because he could cloak himself. He thought she was going to stop him from leaving so he hit her over the head. Poor boy almost died from the blast he caused.”

 

Alex nodded.

 

“I’m so glad she didn’t do it on purpose.”

 

“What exactly has she been doing, J’onn?” Kal asked, eyes narrow.

 

J’onn explained what Lena had been doing, skimming over the deaths she’d caused, saying that they were probably a by-product of the mental powers she’d been using. He also told them both about the Kryptonite bomb, and Kal, who’d been staring at Lena, troubled, blanched.

 

“How big?”

 

J’onn told him, and described the huge quantity of explosive – C-4 – that had been infused with Kryptonite.

 

“I think it would take down most of a city. Or a fleet of ships, if it was placed just right,” J’onn said.

 

“Jesus,” Kal breathed. “I think I owe Miss Luthor here a debt of gratitude. She might just have prevented a genocide.”

 

“I think we all do. That bomb wouldn’t just have killed Kryptonians.”

 

J’onn left Alex looking after Lena and went to arrange a team to remove the Kryptonite bomb and to search the rest of the underground facility.

 

Half a day later, the bomb was in pieces, and the Kryptonite infused explosive locked in the Fortress’s lead-lined safe, protected by Kryptonian security drones. J’onn left the base in Agent Vasquez’s capable hands, finding a place to rest and to pray that nothing else went wrong before the Kryptonians’ arrival.


	10. Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of Lena's actions, the Kryptonians and humans speak at long last, and Kara gets an unexpected visitor.

* * *

Lena woke up with beeping all around her, and she crinkled her face in annoyance.

 

“Five more minutes,” she muttered, turning over and pulling the pillow over her head. For some reason, her head hurt, and she touched it gingerly. It was crusted with dried blood.

  
She sat up, looking around at the room. She was in the DEO’s infirmary, and Alex was asleep in a chair next to her bed, and Maggie and Kal-El were sitting on a couch against the wall, both asleep. Superman, the Man of Steel, Earth’s mightiest hero, had his mouth wide open, was snoring like a train, and had a large patch of drool on his chest.

 

Lena snickered at that, and then winced. Her back hurt, too. What the hell had happened to her?

 

“Lena? Hey! You’re awake. How are you feeling?” Alex asked, almost all in one breath. She stood and lifted a piece of equipment, scanning Lena’s forehead like they were in Star Trek.

 

“I’m in a little pain. How did I get to the DEO?” Lena asked, trying to remember.

 

“You maybe went and took on a little vigilante action, disbanding what was left of Cadmus along with her sister organisations overseas. At least, that’s what we think happened, because you didn’t ask any of us, did you? You dummy.”

 

Alex hit her on the arm, gently, and glowered at her. It all came back to Lena, then. The exhausting nights, the horrible decisions.

 

“I can’t remember what happened last night. I was reading people, and changing their minds, and then… the world turned to fire.”

 

“A young metahuman mistook you for a threat. They had him imprisoned there, and he thought you were trying to stop him from escaping. He is very, very sorry about it, if that makes a difference,” Alex said.

 

“Oh. What happened to the facility?” Lena asked, suddenly worried about the answer to that question.

 

“I’m sorry, Lena. He triggered off some sort of defence mechanism in your mind, I guess. You burned the facility down. The kid used his ability to get out of there, and then he went back in when the fire did down. They found a massive bomb in there in a shielded area, big enough to destroy the whole Kryptonian fleet. Or a city. You saved a lot of people, Lena. J’onn’s not overly pleased, and we more than likely shouldn’t do this, but we’re naming you as a DEO sub-contractor so that any actions you’ve taken during this operation are protected. You won’t be named or blamed for the raids. But Rao help me, Lena, if you do anything like that again without backup, I will kill you. No, I’ll have Kara pout at you for a month.”

 

“I’m sorry, Alex. I just… it needed to be done, and I figured, I have the skills or whatever. So why not me?”

 

“Because it _hurts_ you? Because killing people is wrong, and not only that, it’s horribly difficult to deal with, emotionally?” Alex suggested softly.

 

“Yes. I know. But it just… if we’d gone about this through the usual channels, then something horrible would have happened. I’m fairly sure that I have found the majority of the terrorist cells that Cadmus was working with. I can’t be sure, but I didn’t find any more intel at the last place.”

 

“We’re pretty sure, too. But Lena, you almost got yourself killed. And I know Kara would have killed me if she came back to find out you were gone, especially so close to her returning to Earth. So, if you have any more plans, let the rest of your friends know so that we can back you up. It’s not like we can stop you,” Alex said, shrugging.

 

“I didn’t want to get you all involved. I didn’t want their blood to be on your hands, too. And I owed this to everyone. The things my family has done – I had to try to make up for them, somehow.”

 

“You’re crazy, Luthor,” Alex said, pulling Lena to her and hugging her, hard. “Oh shit, sorry. Did I hurt you?”

 

“No, actually. I think I might be healing,” Lena said, twisting to look at her back. She touched her head again and there was no pain, this time.

She rested for the rest of the day, leaving the DEO early in the evening, and that night she dreamed of Kara.

 

_“Lena? Where have you been? I couldn’t feel you at all when I slept last night,” Kara said, running to her and checking her over for injuries._

_“I was a little… unconscious,” Lena said. “There was a bit of an accident. I’m fine now, though. And we managed to shut down what we think was the last of Cadmus’ facilities and a number of other anti-alien agencies across the world. It’s been a little intense, but I think that things are going to be a lot more stable, now.”_

_“Are you sure you’re okay, Lena? I mean, what kind of missions did you go on? Did Alex watch your back?”_

_“Kara, look. Don’t worry. We don’t have much time together, so just… be here, with me, will you?” Lena asked, touching Kara’s face gently._

_Kara nodded slowly, bending forward to kiss Lena slowly and thoroughly. When they broke apart they were both gasping._

_“I have something I need to ask of you,” Kara said, when she had her breath back._

_“Anything, darling,” Lena said, smiling._

_“I need to show you how to make a device. It is for communication. My mother wants to talk to the President face to face, as it were, just to make sure that there are not any misunderstandings as to our presence here, in Sol’s light,” Kara said. She smiled as she said ‘Sol’, rocking back and forth on her heels happily._

_“Your powers are fully in evidence, then, I guess?” Lena asked. She loved seeing Kara like this, so carefree and loving._

_“Yes. I feel like I used to on Earth. Almost, anyway. It’s like they’re a little dampened.”_

_“That makes sense. The sun is further from you than it is from Earth.”_

_“Indeed. Anyway, I need you to look at this,” Kara said, walking Lena to a table. There were plans there for a device with a crystal at its heart. She looked at the components carefully, doing her best to commit the sections and various parts to memory._

_“The crystal, how do I make this? I don’t think I’ve seen a crystal or any sort of substance with that level of molecular density,” Lena said._

_“Start with some coal. Ask Kal to hold it and blast it with his full heat vision and pressure until it reaches the right temperature. He did it once before to make a diamond for an engagement ring. It just needs to be a touch hotter. You can see the molecules, can’t you?” Kara asked._

_Lena nodded absently._

_“You need to arrange them like this,” Kara said, picking up some sort of tablet and drawing the pattern that the crystal molecules had to take._

_“Okay. What kind of communication is it? Voice? Video?”_

_“Video and sound. We do not possess telepathy, other than this link of ours, so a telepathic link would be pointless. If you can manufacture the item by tomorrow evening, we will try to call at this time tomorrow.”_

_“Okay,” Lena said. She was already absorbed in how she was going to make this comms device. Some of the technology she was sure she could replicate, but there were a few parts that she might need help with. She might be able to use parts from other alien tech that the DEO had access to._

_“Kryptonian fleet to Lena Luthor? Come in, Lena?”_

_Lena snapped back to attention._

_“Sorry, darling. You know what I’m like when I concentrate,” Lena said, smiling widely._

_“I do. I remember how you used to be working on a project and it would take me days to persuade you to leave L-Corp. I had to eat_ kale _for you,” Kara said, face twisting up in disgust._

_“Yeah, well, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to see that gorgeous face looking totally disgusted, could I?” Lena asked, turning to pull Kara to her._

_“You truly are evil, Lena Luthor,” Kara said, before leaning forward to kiss Lena again._

_“Yes, I am,” Lena said, inside her own head only, as she accepted Kara’s embrace and melted into it._

 

_They managed to make it a little further, this time, before the cock-blocking gods of intergalactic telepathic soulmates pulled them apart again. Lena heard Kara swear, loudly, under her breath, as she disappeared from view._

_Lena smiled, tasting Kara on her own lips, and she slept like a baby, blessedly without thoughts of dying anti-alien terrorists to plague her._

 

***

 

Kara woke the following day feeling hopeful. And worried. Something had happened to Lena during those nights, first when she hadn’t wanted to talk, and then when she disappeared for a full night. It was a puzzle, but since they weren’t in contact with anyone else, she couldn’t very well ask Alex or Winn what had actually happened. Knowing Lena, it was likely to be something foolhardy, something that would save a lot of lives while putting her own at terrible risk.

 

Kara shook her head and went to breakfast, which she ate in the lab, and then she sat by one of the huge viewing windows drinking a cup of hot _kaf_. The taste was a little stale. She was hoping they could have the fresh version within the next few years, once their new planet was terraformed and they could grow animals and crops.

 

She stared out the window, trying to remember what the P stood for in the Solar System acronym. The one humans had taken out of the list of planets. Kara had been extremely upset about it at the time. The poor planetoid didn’t do anything but sit out here on the far edges of the solar system, only to be left, rejected and alone.

 

“You are not Pluto, darling,” Alura said, stepping up behind her and placing a hand on her shoulder.

 

“Pluto! That’s what it’s called.”

 

“Yes. Why so pensive, my daughter?” Alura said playfully. She was so different from her dead-in-the-eyes AI counterpart that it made Kara’s eyes tear up.

 

“I’m just thinking about Earth. About Lena. About our new home, wherever that might be.”

 

“Your soulmate?” Alura said, neutrally.

 

“Yes. She was unwell last night, when I saw her in the dream,” Kara said, jaw tightening.

 

“Your Aunt Lara is beyond ecstatic that she has managed to prove the existence of the soul bond. She may not even want to see Kal-El again, the way she is behaving. She might adopt you instead,” Alura said, laughing.

 

“And what about you? Are you pleased to be visiting Earth?” Kara asked, detecting some hesitancy in her mother’s demeanour.

 

“I am. For some reason, I believe that this will work. You know that I am more a person of science than of faith. But something about all of this seems like it was meant to be.”

 

“But something is bothering you, _ieiu_ , is it not?” Kara asked.

 

“I worry about this woman. The daughter of the woman who succeeded in killing you. I would never interfere in a soul bond, love. I worry, though.”

 

“Mom, she killed her own mother. And her brother, the one who tried to kill Superman. She made the decision and she used her powers to do it. Powers that they forced on her. She is not remotely like them. If she were, my friends on Earth wouldn’t have ever let her near me. My boss, J’onn – he’s a Martian. I told you about him. He has read her mind on more than one occasion and he lets her work for his organisation. So unless she’s powerful enough to fool a Martian’s powers, she is exactly what she seems.”

 

Alura nodded.

 

“Thank you, Little One. That puts my mind at ease.”

 

Kara mentally ran through the planets again and remembered that Neptune was next. Neptune, the Roman God of the seas.

 

“They have a lot of legends, your humans, do they not?” Alura asked, idly.

 

“They do,” Kara agreed. “Did I say that aloud, about Neptune?”

 

“No, darling,” Alura said, laughing. It was a tinkly, crystalline sound, and Kara had missed that sound so much since she left Krypton. “I simply watched your eyes shift to where the next planet will show in the viewscreen. And your feet are tapping with impatience. You long to be home,” Alura said, a little wistfully.

 

Kara smiled.

 

“You are my home, _ieiu_. They are, too. I got to have two families. Two sets of friends. Two worlds. And now Rao has given me back my family. I must be the luckiest person in the universe.”

 

“Only you would say such a thing, Little One, after the life of pain and heartbreak you have endured,” Alura said, tears in her eyes. “I never wanted to let you go into that pod. Every day since then I have regretted letting you go. I am so sorry I ever let you go, daughter.”

 

Kara was crying, now, and she stood, wrapping her mother up in her arms. Despite being Astra’s twin, Alura always seemed a little less solid, a little less corporeal.

 

“You did what you could so that Kal-El and I would survive. Had the Council been a little more forward thinking, a little less fossilized, you would not have been forced into the actions you had to take. I just thank Rao that father is as mad as a hatter and would not give up,” Kara said, chuckling.

 

“A Hatter?” Alura asked, tilting her head in confusion.

 

“An Earth reference. A character from a book. Alice in Wonderland. I’ll make sure to find you a copy,” Kara said.

 

“I would be grateful for any new tales, in all honesty, my darling. I believe we have been stagnating here, our will atrophying. I believe our people were dying just as our planet was. We have had no new births since Krypton’s death, and while our people have certainly enjoyed the effect the yellow sun has had on their libido, it has not yet helped. Perhaps when we are established in our new home,” Alura said, dreamily.

 

“You wish to have more children?” Kara asked, stunned.

 

Alura looked up at her, surprised. She had been touching her abdomen absently.

 

“Perhaps, Little One. Before, we were overcrowded and dying. But now we have a civilisation to repopulate. And I am not so old, I don’t think, that I cannot conceive. We still have the technology, of course, so we could perhaps carry one child each, within our bodies, and another in a birthing pod. Our biggest issue will be making more Kryptonians,” Alura said, eyes far away.

 

“I hadn’t even thought about that. My focus has been on getting back to Earth, on finding us a home,” Kara said, a little startled by the thought of her mother having more children. She wasn’t even sure how old her mother was, chronologically. She looked perhaps 40 Earth years old. She was beautiful.

 

“I understand, darling. Your focus was on galvanising us, on getting the ships built, and now on choosing the right satellite for us to settle on – should your Earth friends be agreeable. I have been working with other teams to make decisions about how to return our native wildlife to a yellow sun system, cultivating sustainable food and water sources, and, of course, repopulating,” Alura said. “We work together, my daughter. No-one person’s work is more important than the other, and together we succeed.”

 

“I had almost forgotten about that,” Kara breathed. “Kal – he always works alone, and he encouraged me to do the same. I was never very good at it. I had so many people around – I needed that. But sometimes it made me feel weak, because they still looked at him like he was some sort of god, and I was just… blah, Supergirl, you know?”

 

“You, my dear, have never been ‘just’ anything,” Alura said, smiling. “I have never told you, I do not think, how very proud I was when my sister first arrived at Argo City and she told me what you had become. The strongest warrior is the one who fights to defend others.”

 

“I love you, mom,” Kara said, smiling. “I love you so much.”

 

Their team – Kara, her father and her uncle – came to a consensus later that day that they would, if allowed, colonise Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon. Based on their superior knowledge of how planets developed over time, they were almost 100% sure that Ganymede would not develop life of its own, due to its position in the solar system and its proximity to the gas giant, Jupiter. Without their technology, the moon would never gain the stability needed to support organic life.

 

“So, my darling. How does it feel to have earned your place in the Kryptonian Science Council?” Jor-El asked, smiling, as Zor-El retrieved a bottle of Altairian wine spirits from a nearby coolbox.

 

“What?” Kara asked, flabbergasted.

 

“You are the Science Council’s newest member, my niece. As the two remaining Science Masters, Zor-El and I have the power to appoint new members. And you have earned it tenfold since you returned to us. So, I welcome you, Kara Zor-El, as the newest Science Master,” Jor-El said, smiling widely. Zor-El handed them both a glass of wine spirits, and then began to hand out more drinks, because as Kara had been confused and listening to Jor, the room behind them had filled up.

 

Kara turned to see her entire remaining family – except for Kal – smiling back at her, and she burst into happy tears. They sang to her in _Kryptahniuo_ , a song of congratulations that she hadn’t heard since the last graduation she’d attended, over 38 years ago.

 

“Congratulations, my daughter,” Alura said. The rest of those present kissed their fingertips, holding them out to Kara, and she choked out a ‘thank you’.

 

A little later, the newly-minted Science Master returned to her quarters, having a quick bath in the golden fluid they used and re-used to clean themselves, and then she changed into formal robes. They were to speak to the President, today – as long as Lena had worked out how to make the device.

 

Kara was waiting in the larger room that she and the other scientists used for meetings, facing the wallscreen. She was chewing on her fingernail, and she was more than ready to see the faces of those she’d been missing for so long.

 

“It is time,” Alura said, nodding at the young man nearest to the wallscreen. He did something complicated with a crystal device and firstly confirmed that there was a receiver on the other end. Then he nodded when Alura asked if the communication was going through. He stepped out of the way and after a few moments, the screen lit up. It showed the DEO headquarters, and the President was front and centre. J’onn was standing next to the President, with Alex on his right, and Lena was standing next to Alex, her arms wrapped around Winn’s left arm.

 

“Kara!”

 

It was Alex, and she looked stricken.

 

Kara stood up, waving gently at the people on the screen. She didn’t try to hide her tears.

 

“I missed you all so much,” she choked out. Lena was doubled over, sobbing, and even Alex was having trouble staying composed.

 

“Supergirl,” the President’s voice broke in. “It’s so nice to see you well. The entire nation mourned when you…” the President paused, her voice cracking. “When you were gone, it broke our hearts. I cannot describe the joy I can feel in this room now that we are sure that you are well.”

 

“Thank you, President Marsdin. If I may, I would like to introduce you to my mother, Alura Zor-El. She is the Head of our Council. Here, I am just another Kryptonian, and you need to speak to the boss,” Kara said, grinning. Astra wordlessly handed her a handkerchief, and Kara sat down, allowing Alura to speak.

 

Their talks were cordial, and Alura was charming and careful to defer to the President at all times. After all, Earth had just suffered through an invasion, and she did not want to give them the wrong impression.

 

President Marsdin was charmed, and after several hours of negotiation, confirmed that she and the other leaders of Earth had agreed to allow the Kryptonians into Earth’s orbit.

 

“This is a time-limited offer. If, within six months, we haven’t come to a satisfactory agreement concerning where you will live, we will ask you to move on. The same will apply if your people raise a finger against any of ours. Your physical strength is much more than that possessed by humans, not to mention your other abilities. We have been burned by the Daxamites. I am assured by people that I trust – Superman, of course Supergirl, J’onn Jonzz and Lena Luthor - that your intentions are only to find a home and to find allies. We hope that our solar system can be home for you, and that we can truly be your allies. But know this, Alura Zor-El and all of your people. If it seems at any point that you are going to turn on Earth’s people, we will not hesitate to use any and all technology and power at our disposal to fight you.”

 

Alura inclined her head slightly.

 

“You are a strong and honest leader, President Marsdin. I believe you would have liked our planet, before. As I am sure my daughter – your Supergirl – told you, Daxam was not a friend to Krypton. We had thought to seek them out, to try to make some sort of alliance, but thankfully Kara was able to tell us what had happened here. Part of the alliance we wish to offer is defence against the Daxamites. They have superior weaponry, but only because we never chose to develop our weapons technology, preferring to deal with science and learning. But in the event it is needed, we will work with you to develop countermeasures to their technology and to their powers. The crystal will allow you to speak with our people any time you wish, from now until our arrival. We have transmat portals on all ships. I suggest that you place a receiving portal somewhere secure and we will come through in small groups once we are in orbit. Thank you, President Marsdin.”

 

President Marsdin nodded.

 

“I appreciate the thought, Madam Zor-El. If we could first speak with the scientists who deal with your transmat portals, I would be most grateful. As your daughter no doubt informed you, the Daxamites took advantage of our lack of knowledge on the portals to create one large enough to transport their whole fleet into our atmosphere. We have no desire to be tricked in that way again.”

 

Alura nodded, gravely, giving quick orders for those who should stay, and who should leave.

 

“Do you need me to stay?” Kara asked, as her mother sent most of the room’s occupants out to rest.

 

“No, not now darling. I plan to leave shortly once I have handed over to the transport team,” Alura said.

 

“Madam President, everyone? I am going to go, try to sleep for a while. I will see you all in a day or so, if Rao wills it,” Kara said, holding up one hand in a sort-of wave.

 

The DEO staff began to applaud, for some reason, and Kara blushed profusely. She backed out of the room, smiling at Alex and Lena and Winn and J’onn. Lena caught her eye just as she stepped back, and her eyes were shining with unshed tears.

 

“I love you,” Kara mouthed, as subtly as she could. Lena mouthed it back, tears spilling over now, and Kara had to leave before she disgraced herself.

 

She took ten minutes to stand in the sonic shower, despite having bathed not long before. The quiet buzz of the shower soothed and massaged her skin even as it cleansed her. The bath on the ship was her preferred method, but she was suddenly exhausted. She had lived for over 38 years without her family, with the loss of everything she’d ever known, looked after by her Earth family, and now both of her lives were colliding. It was incredibly tiring and a lot to take in. She flopped down onto her bed, not bothering to put on any sleep clothes. She was asleep within seconds.

 

When she woke in the morning, hair was tickling her nose. She pushed it away, sniffing. It moved back, and she shook her head, trying to dislodge it.

 

“Five more minutes,” a voice said, grumbling.

 

Kara hmphed at that, pulling the warm body next to her in closer. She nuzzled into the hair that had been tickling her, and succumbed to sleep for a little while longer.

 

She woke up a while later because she was cold. When she tried to work out why, she couldn’t. She felt around, and the bedcovers were gone. No… there they were. Wrapped around a warm body. Not Kara’s body.

 

Kara’s eyes snapped open. Lena Luthor was sitting on the bed, the covers wrapped around her otherwise naked body, and she was staring at Kara.

 

“Lena?”


	11. Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A look at Lena's time after her and Kara's shared dream.

* * *

When Lena woke up after her dream with Kara, she hurried to find paper and pencil to write down the plans Kara had shown her. She called Winn and Alex and asked them to meet her at the DEO. She then changed into black tactical gear and transported herself onto the platform where Kara used to land.

 

“Lena. To what do we owe the honour?” J’onn asked. He was fixing a wall panel. She stopped beside it, absently asking him to move back, and she knitted the cable back together on a molecular level. The device beeped and started to work again immediately.

 

“I… I had another dream,” Lena said. “I don’t have his number, but I think I might need Kal-El, too,” she said, chewing on a thumbnail.

 

“I can get him here. No problem. So what do you need? Is Kara okay?” J’onn asked, and in that moment he was just a worried father.

 

“She’s fine,” Lena reassured him. “She just wanted me to build this crystal communication device. I’m going to need some coal and a tiny amount of… iron, I think, and lead. And this metal, here? I’ve never seen it before,” she said, showing him the plans she’d drawn from memory.

 

“We have it. Very rare, but we have enough for what you need. Let me call Kal and I’ll get you started in a room somewhere.”

 

J’onn wandered off, phone in one hand, Vasquez on his other side. He gave her a series of orders and she walked over to Lena briskly.

 

“Ma’am? Would you like to follow me? I have a room for you and Superman and the others to use.”

 

Lena followed her to a small conference room, not unlike the ones her own R&D people used for brainstorming. She sat down at the head of the table, using the scanner in the corner of the room to project the crudely drawn device on the wall. To her great relief, Vasquez and several other agents appeared a few minutes or so later with a few platters full of food.

 

Her stomach groaned, and Vasquez chuckled.

 

“Agent Vasquez, if I didn’t love another, please believe me when I say I would kiss you right now. I had no idea how hungry I was,” Lena said, grabbing a hash brown with her fingers and demolishing it.

 

“Ma’am, please call me Susan. And I knew as soon as I saw your face this morning. Supergi… she used to look just like that when she was hangry. I called the commissary before J’onn even gave me his orders.”

 

“Well, thank you, Susan. And if it’s okay for you to do so, please call me Lena,” she said, picking up items from each platter in front of her and piling her plate high.

 

“Ma’am… I mean, uh, Lena? Can I ask you… I know what the Director has told us, but I just… is she really out there?” Vasquez asked, a little plaintively.

 

Lena smiled.

 

“She is. I promise. The DEO have picked up the ships already, right? I’ve seen the inside of those ships. Or the one that Kara’s on, at least. Do you want me to show you a little of what I’ve seen? I’ll just send you some pictures, I won’t intrude into your mind at all, I promise,” Lena said, wiping her now-greasy fingers on a napkin.

 

“Yes, please,” Susan said, biting her lip.

 

“Okay, then. Give me your hand,” Lena said, holding hers out. When Susan took it, she sent her a number of images and little snapshots of things Kara had said to her (the PG things, obviously). When she let go of Vasquez’s hand, the other woman was wiping her eyes, trying to regain her stoic demeanour.

 

“It’s really her. She’s out there,” Vasquez whispered.

 

“Yes. Only a couple of days away, Susan. I promise. And this device – if we can fabricate it quickly enough, we should be able to see that in person this evening. If you want, I can request your presence?” Lena offered.

 

“That would be amazing, Lena. Thank you,” Vasquez said, swallowing.

 

“You’re most welcome. Kara… she’s amazing. She has so many people out there who are so devoted to her, and honestly I kind of wanted to hate her for that at first. As soon as she smiled at me and bounced up and down on those toes, I was just… yeah. Gone. I couldn’t have hated her if I tried,” Lena said, making a sandwich from sausage and scrambled egg and two precariously-placed hash browns.

 

Vasquez smiled at her, wiping away an errant tear.

 

“Thank you again, Lena. I mean it. We’ve all missed her so much. You know, with the El Mayarah and the hope, it was kind of infectious,” Susan said.

 

“Yeah, it was. It is. Because she’s not dead, so suck on that in hell, Lillian,” Lena muttered.

 

“Thank you for that, too,” Susan said, after carefully checking if anyone was watching. “I know we can’t say anything but I know what happened. Everyone does. And we’re all proud of you. You already were one of us, but now, anyone out there would give their life for you in a heartbeat. I hope you know that.”

 

Lena coughed, trying to get rid of the tears that were building up behind her eyes.

 

“That means a lot to me, Susan. Thank you. This organisation has meant more to me than I could adequately express. Without you all helping me, I would probably have gone crazy when my powers started working – that or I’d have blown up half the continent,” Lena said.

 

Vasquez snorted.

 

“To be fair, Lena, half the catering staff have a pool about what state you’re going to destroy if you have a bad period. I didn’t put any money in, because I’m not a moron, but they seem to think you have something against the Midwest,” Vasquez said, shrugging.

 

“People never change, huh?” Lena said, laughing.

 

“No ma’am, that they do not,” Vasquez said, standing a little straighter. Superman, Alex and Winn arrived just then, with J’onn in their wake.

 

“I’ll have some more food brought shortly,” Vasquez said, nodding at Lena and Superman, and then she was gone. Lena waved at the others and began demolishing her sandwich. Kal-El made several up for himself, and Alex and Winn grabbed the remainder with sour looks at each other.

 

“Hey, she said she’s bringing more,” Lena said, protesting.

 

“I know, but if I don’t get my coffee, I will fuck you up, Luthor,” Alex said, growling. She looked awful.

 

“You okay, Alex?” Lena asked, taking another huge bite. Jesus. How had she lived on kale salads all this time?

 

“Long night. Couldn’t sleep. She’s out there, and it’s just… what if something goes wrong, now? At the last minute? Like, what if your mom had some last-ditch plan, and they’re all going to die just as they reach Earth because she’s set up some sort of android army made from kryptonite death rays?”

 

“She’s going to be fine, Alex. If there are any armies of Kryptonite death rays, I will destroy them,” Lena said, jaw clenching. The building rumbled around them, a warning, and she took a deep breath to regain control. “Whatever Lillian’s plans were, I’m fairly sure we’ve dealt with them all, and for those we haven’t? We’ll just have to work together to see that the fleet gets here safely,” Lena said, suddenly weary.

 

“El Mayarah,” Kal-El said, nodding at Lena, his green eyes intense.

 

“El Mayarah,” Lena agreed.

 

A couple of agents bustled into the room then, serving coffee and leaving more plates of savoury food and sweet breakfast pastries, the latter of which J’onn launched himself at, muttering.

 

Lena caught Winn’s eye and giggled. Who knew the Martian Manhunter had a sweet tooth?

 

“So, I had a dream last night. Kara and I talked for a while about personal stuff, and then she asked me to build this. Alura asked if we could get in touch before they arrive here, so we can see their faces and they can see ours, I guess. I think we have all the information we need. What do you guys think, Winn, Alex?” Lena asked.

 

“That looks pretty straightforward to me. Do we have any of that metal?” Winn asked, nose wrinkling doubtfully.

 

“Yes,” J’onn said, around a mouthful of chocolate croissant. “I sent an agent to fetch that and the other materials you asked for, Lena.”

 

“Okay. I have done a lot of thinking this morning, and the only purpose I can think of – other than communication, of course – is that this device could be used to remotely operate our transmat portals, similarly to how Rhea did. Obviously we have no reason to think that the Kryptonians have anything nefarious in mind, and I’m certainly not suggesting that Kara is doing anything suspicious. What are your thoughts?” Lena asked, looking around at a slightly less enthusiastic group.

 

“I think… I think it’s a possibility, but as you said, if anyone is trying to deceive us, it’s not Kara. I say we build it, but with a few modifications. If this unit tries to send out a signal to anything other than the other comms device out there in space, it will be destroyed. Does that seem reasonable to everyone?” J’onn said, in an even tone.

 

Everyone nodded. Kal looked a little puzzled, though.

 

“Not that I don’t appreciate being kept in the loop, but why am I here?” he asked. “I can’t really help with the tech stuff. That’s Winn’s wheelhouse.”

 

Winn made a tiny, high-pitched noise of delight next to Kal-El, and Alex rolled her eyes. Lena swallowed back a giggle with difficulty.

 

“You’re going to make us a diamond, Mr Kent. Or more precisely, a crystal to be the centre of the comms system. According to Kara, you did it before, when you proposed to a… Miss Lang, was it?” Lena smirked as Alex gasped.

 

“You didn’t! Lana Lang? I thought Lois was your, like, one true love!” she said, punching him in the solid muscle of his arm and then cursing.

 

“She is. And she’s my wife, and everything is great. But Lana was my first love, and a long time ago, I got some coal and squeezed it as hard as I could manage, combining the force with my heat vision. It was like I had the centre of the sun in my hand. I had the local jeweller put it on a band, and I asked her if she would marry me,” Clark said, shrugging.

 

“And?” Did she say yes?” Winn asked, eyes wide.

 

“She did. And we were engaged for about… 6 months, I think, before Lois waltzed her way into my life. I had to be honest with Lana. True love is the unstoppable force,” Clark said.

 

Winn sighed, and Lena really did giggle, then. She looked up to see the men looking at her and Alex stifling a laugh in her napkin.

 

“Sorry. Frog in my throat,” Lena said, reddening.

 

An agent knocked on the door just then, with a box full of materials.

 

“Better head to the lab, then,” Lena said, standing. The others followed her, Alex walking by her side, and they tried, unsuccessfully as it turned out, not to laugh the whole way. Lena had never seen Alex so shocked before as she was by Clark being engaged, and it tickled her immensely.

 

The crystal-making took approximately 7 minutes, and it was surprisingly easy for Lena to slide the molecules over and around one another and into the pattern Kara had described. When it clicked into place, Lena gasped. It was perfect, in the shape of the part-diamond that Kara and Kal both wore on their chests when they flew. Harder than diamonds or possibly anything on this Earth. She could make billions with this material alone.

 

“I think that’s done,” Lena said, smiling at Kal, who was still holding the white-hot crystal in his hand. They stored it in a safe room, cool but not cold, for the material to settle. The rest of the morning and most of the afternoon was spent wiring and welding, melting metals together using Kal’s heat vision or Lena’s pyrokinesis (Kal had decided to stay to watch the process, fascinated). The extra metal into which the crystal had to be seated took their combined power to melt even a fraction, and in the end Lena had to hold it up in the air while vibrating the molecules as Kal hit it with his heat vision and she shaped it with her mind. After all that, she was exhausted and had to order yet more food. The commissary must have been waiting for them, because 8 pizzas arrived shortly afterwards, much to her relief and Kal’s, and they took a much-needed break while Alex and Winn took care of some of the more intricate wiring on the device.

 

Lena and Kal barely spoke, choosing to breathe and eat only, and they demolished 4 of the pizzas between them in an embarrassingly short time.

 

“You know, it’s nice to know I’m not the only one who has to do that. Apart from Kara, you know? We used to go to competitive eating places and they would just stare at her, this skinny little kid with the glasses taking down a 7-pound trucker’s challenge in some diner. We got a lot of free food like that, when I’d come up and see her. Maybe, when things have settled, we could do a few of those together, all three of us?”

 

It was an olive branch, and a huge one. The Man of Steel didn’t bend, but here he was, doing just that. For the younger sister of the man who had tried to kill him, and who had killed many thousands of others.

 

“That sounds wonderful. And slightly gross, because I know what Kara looks like when she’s really pigging out. But now it just sounds like a nice way to feel full for a while. I have been hungry to one degree or another since I got these powers. I really need to find some way to get more calories in a single meal. I doubt the Kryptonians will have thought about it,” Lena said, thoughtfully. She picked up another slice, trying not to drool at the combinations the chefs had sent up. Spicy and sweet and drizzled with sour cream or garlic sauce or any number of things that Kara had, at one time or another, said were her ‘favourite’.

 

“I wanted to hate you, you know. When everything happened with Lex. I knew him, I knew he wasn’t crazy like they were saying. So it had to be your fault, you know?” Lena said, conversationally. “It wasn’t until I saw his face and he told me himself that he was proud of what he’d done in Metropolis that I realised that my brother was dead. It was like he’d been dead for years and no-one told me. But then I saw you give testimony at the trial, and I saw how devastated you were, and I realised that you were the victim, as much as any of the humans he’d killed. It was a hard lesson to learn, that some people are just bad and there’s nothing you can do, other than to protect yourselves and others from it.”

 

Kal regarded her gravely for a moment.

 

“I understand. When I heard about the Medusa virus, and the Kryptonians who were here on Earth before, I did wonder what kind of place I came from. Kara – she really is a Kryptonian. She had her formative years there. But I didn’t even know where I came from until I was… 16, I think. It’s a long story. But she had this idea of what Krypton was, and hers were built on the idealistic view of a child. My idea of Krypton was this land full of genius supermen who had somehow been destroyed, and I thought they could do no wrong. It turns out, they could, and they did. Medusa was designed to wipe out all alien life on Krypton, and it was designed by Kara’s father. Kara’s mother was complicit in the cover-up about the state of the planet. I mean, not many people would have had the time to find transportation and leave the planet, but there was some time. Instead, she sent her twin sister to Fort Rozz to hide the truth, and she stood by and let her civilisation be destroyed. I think there’s a lot more to that story, but whatever her reasons, she was, directly or indirectly, responsible for every death on Krypton. And then there’s Kara. If anyone could give you hope for the future, it would be Kara. She’s extraordinary, and not just because she’s stronger than I am. It’s because she hopes. She wavered, when she arrived here and I was already grown up. But she pulled it together and then she put on the cape. Whatever Krypton becomes, it will be because of her.”

 

Lena smiled. She was glad that someone else saw Kara the way she did.

 

“I blamed you, too, you know,” Clark said, taking a large sip from his bucket of cola. “I only knew you a little back in Smallville, but I knew how much Lex loved you and how much he cared about your opinion. I couldn’t believe that you didn’t have anything to do with his plans. And then you showed the court what you had worked on with him. I had the choice then, because you were being completely honest. I could see that. But I still chose to think that you were involved. And when all that stuff happened with the Venture, and then your mother, I tried to hate you. I really did. And every time I thought about it, I saw Kara pouting at me, telling me you weren’t like your family. So I gave in. And when Lillian killed… when Lillian did what she did, I saw your face and I knew that there was no way you’d be involved. You have too much compassion, which I have to assume comes from your biological mother’s side. You could never plan something like that, just to hurt someone.”

 

Shame flickered through her. She had done exactly that, not only with Lex and Lillian, but with hundreds of other alien-haters across the world.

 

“I’m not talking about the things you did these past few weeks, Lena. I mean cold-blooded murder for the sake of killing that person because you didn’t want them to live. What you did was to stop those people who were actively planning the genocide of the remaining Kryptonians. None of them cared who would be caught in the crossfire. That’s not who you are. Alex told me how devastated you were about what happened in the desert, when that kid hit you. If you were Lillian, do you think she would have cared, even for a moment, about those enemy soldiers?”

 

Lena shook her head, staring at her fingernails.

 

“I still did it, Kal,” she said in an almost-whisper.

 

“You did. You did something I could never do. You did what needed to be done. Perhaps if we had a Fort Rozz of our own, somewhere secure to stop people from getting out and wreaking havoc on the innocent? Maybe then there would have been another choice. J’onn and I already talked about doing exactly what you did, you know. About dropping in on Lex at Stryker’s island. We could have abducted him and thrown him into space or burned him to nothing with heat vision. But we couldn’t. And you did. You went about it the best way you knew how, and I am grateful to you, Lena. I don’t condone killing, but I know what you did took tremendous courage and willpower. You’re family now, as far as I am concerned.”

 

“Thank you, Kal. I’m… stunned, honestly, to hear you say that. But I swear I will always protect your cousin and anyone else I can. These powers – they were an attempt by Lillian and Lex to make a super-soldier out of me. I won’t allow my power to be used for those purposes, but nor will I waste them.”

 

“I’m glad to hear you say that, Lena. I think you should talk to Winn about one of his suits. You’ll have to wear the crest of El, of course, now that you and Kara are promised. But you get a suit and a name, and I think you’ll be getting a call from some very interesting people in a few months, once the Kryptonian thing blows over.”

 

Kal grinned at her, offering his hand, and Lena took it, squeezing gently.

 

“Welcome to the family, Lena Luthor,” he said.

 

She smiled back, and blinked back tears.

 

“Thank you, Kal,” she said, smiling and crying at once.

 

They went back to work, relieving Winn and Alex so that they could eat. (Kal politely re-heated the pizzas for them with his heat vision.) An hour or so later, the device was complete, and a small readout on one side confirmed that there was a twin device at approximately the spatial co-ordinates they’d expected the fleet to reach, somewhere in between Jupiter and Saturn.

 

“There. I think we’re done,” Lena said, standing back and massaging her back.

 

“Yeah we are. Great work, everyone. That was teamwork, right there,” Kal said, offering high fives and dorky hugs.  

 

They all went to bathe and change (except Kal, who only had the one Supersuit) so that they were ready for their videoconference with the Kryptonians. The President had confirmed that she would be arriving soon, and would be in a meeting with her aides and advisors and J’onn and Lucy Lane until the call came in.

 

Lena felt like she had ants in her pants, so she asked Kal if he wanted to go for a quick patrol around the city. He agreed, and they flew around once, and then again, but the city was quiet. However, the flight served its purpose, because Lena found herself calm and ready to face the evening.

 

“Superman, Miss Luthor… we’ve had a ping from the other end of the circuit. Recommend you return immediately,” J’onn said into their earpieces.

 

They acknowledged and flew back to the DEO, landing 30 seconds after the message. Alex was looking around for them. Half of the DEO, it appeared, and a large number of government officials were waiting to ‘meet’ the Kryptonians.

 

“Lena. Kal!” Alex called.

 

They went to stand next to their friends, and Lena grabbed Winn’s arm, smiling at Vasquez who waved at her from the other side of the room, a silly grin on her face. Lena was a few steps away from the President, and normally that would have made her incredibly giddy. But for now, she had eyes only for one person. Kara Danvers Zor-El.

 

The screen blinked to life in front of them. The room had what appeared to be cream-coloured or beige walls, and the light was a dim red. The room was full of people dressed as Kara had been in her shared dreams with Lena.

 

There she was. Sitting next to the woman who’d just risen to her feet. Kara. She looked radiant, and Lena couldn’t stop looking. When she stood up, dorky and clumsy as usual, Lena found herself bursting into tears, sobbing into Winn’s shoulder.

 

The talks went on for some time, and Lena was beginning to wilt with exhaustion when she heard the President and Alura agree to a six-month trial period, with the Kryptonians staying in Earth orbit while getting their new home ready. Kara and most of the others excused themselves, then, and Lena didn’t take her eyes off Kara until she left the room.

 

Those who weren’t needed dispersed, then, and Lena said goodnight to Alex and Winn and J’onn, and her newest friend Kal-El. She transported herself back to her penthouse, stopping only to strip off her clothes. She was asleep before her head touched the pillow.

 

When she woke, she was being held in strong arms. There was a hard, warm body against her, and she mumbled something before falling asleep again, the arms tightening around her. She woke a little later and rolled over, trying to work out where she was. It wasn’t her bed, but that wasn’t unusual, these days. She slept at the DEO a lot, when she’d worked too much or just couldn’t be bothered to go home before sleeping. And she had a small, secret apartment inside of her office. This bed didn’t belong in any of those places. The material was beyond soft, and it seemed to have some sort of property where it kept the body at just the right temperature for sleep. She opened her eyes to see a featureless blank ceiling, panels separated by what appeared to be… bulkheads? But why would she be on a ship?

 

She turned her head and gasped. Sleeping next to her, naked as the day she was born, was Kara Zor-El, blonde hair spilling around her shoulders like a golden mane. Lena suddenly realised that she, too, was naked, and she pulled more of the bed cover over her body to cover her modesty.

 

It was at that point that Kara woke up, and much like Lena before her, she gasped when she realised that Lena was in her bed.

 

“Lena?” she gasped out, completely stunned.

 

“Yes. Yes, it’s me,” Lena said, throwing herself forward to wrap her arms around Kara’s neck. “Thank god you’re real,” she said, sobbing.

 

Kara pulled Lena closer to her, ignoring their nakedness, and she cried as she took in the scent and feel of the friend she had left behind.

 

“I missed you so much,” Kara mumbled, her face buried in Lena’s hair.

 

“You died, Kara. I did CPR, and your blood was already cold. I thought I was going to die, too. I wanted to. I love you so much,” Lena sobbed.

 

Kara pulled back a little, a hand on each cheek, looking Lena in the eye.

 

“I love you so much, _:zrhueiao._ I am so sorry that you had to see what your mother did. I would never have wanted you to see that. I love you,” Kara said, tears streaming down her face. Then she stopped speaking. She kissed Lena fervently, their tears mingling in their mouths, and in a moment Lena had her pinned against the mattress, their bodies touching from shoulder to hip. Their hands roamed, and Kara was moaning into her mouth when someone knocked at the door.

 

“Little One? Are you well?”

 

“Just a minute, Aunt Astra,” Kara called out, reddening. “I’m sorry, love. Let me get you some robes. I think we need to go and explain just how you got here.”

 

Lena nodded, her breathing shaky. She hadn’t expected this sort of a wakeup call - not that she was remotely complaining, of course – but it was a shock. Seeing Kara in the flesh, getting to touch that flesh for the first time as an almost-lover, tasting her mouth – it was overwhelming and beautiful.

 

She dressed as quickly as she was able, struggling a little with the robe’s fastenings, but within a few moments she was ready, her hair brushed and tied back tidily, and Kara was looking at her appreciatively.

 

“What is it, Kara? Did I put it on wrong?” Lena asked, looking down at the robes and the odd but comfortable shoes.

 

“No, not at all. I just never expected to see Kryptonian clothing again, let alone see you dressed in our robes. It is very strange to see you dressed like… like one of us. Like family.”

 

Lena reddened again.

 

“Good, strange?”

 

“Oh, yes,” Kara said, eyes wide. “Better than anything I could ever have dreamed of.”

 

Lena bit her lip and looked away, uncharacteristically shy. Why was it that she could stare down a roomful of fat-cat CEOs or a potential assassin, but one look from Kara and she came apart at the seams?

 

The knock at the door happened again. Kara winced and held out a hand to Lena.

 

“Time to face the music, my love.”

 

The door opened and Kara’s aunt Astra was standing there, a knife in one hand. She looked about ready to pounce.

 

“Aunt Astra, I’d like you to meet my… Lena. Lena Luthor, this is Astra In-Ze, my aunt. Reports of her death, much like mine, have been greatly exaggerated,” Kara said, mock-bowing to each of them.

 

“How did you get here, Miss Luthor?” Astra asked, eyes narrowed.

 

“I can’t be sure, Miss In-Ze, but I believe I teleported to the ship when I was asleep. My powers seem to be connected to my emotions, and after seeing you all last night, I wanted to see Kara so badly. I expect my powers simply acted on that desire,” Lena said, shrugging.

 

Astra stared at her for a moment, before relaxing and making the knife disappear somewhere, as if by magic.

 

“Welcome to our ship, then, Miss Luthor. I am delighted to meet you. Kara has told us all about you.”

 

Lena nodded, taking Astra’s hand and shaking it gently.

 

“I am honoured to meet you, too, Miss In-Ze. Kara has missed you very much. Your loss was incredibly difficult for her,” Lena said, meeting Astra’s gaze evenly.

 

“I felt little, thank Rao, but when I woke and realised that my Little One was still on Earth, I was devastated. She is the best of us, Lena Luthor. You have chosen well, to take her as your bond-mate,” Astra said, with a hint of a smile.

 

“It is an honour to know Kara at all,” Lena said, face reddening. Bond-mate? That sounded awfully permanent. But then Kara had told her that Kryptonians took love and marriage very seriously. Perhaps more seriously than Lena had realised. She swallowed and took Kara’s arm as Astra walked off with purpose.

 

Lena followed along, taking in the sights of the ship. It was well made, but for utility rather than aesthetics. It didn’t smell odd or strange, which Lena might have expected given that the Kryptonians had been stuck in here for the best part of a month. But there did seem to be more-than-adequate bathing facilities, so perhaps they just took a lot of pride in their appearance.

 

Astra stopped at a door that looked identical to the rest, knocking twice. A guard opened it from the inside, and Astra murmured something to the woman. The room looked to be the same room they had used for their conference the night before. A conference that was obviously still going on, albeit with different departments collaborating.

 

The guard opened the door again and let two people out. Alura and Zor-El.

 

They looked at Lena curiously, but Astra showed them to a nearby room instead.

 

“Mom, Dad? This is Lena. We think her powers malfunctioned a little. She dreamed of seeing me last night, and it seems like her powers brought her here,” Kara said, fidgeting a little.

 

“I am very glad to meet you, Lena Luthor,” Alura said, after a beat of silence. “My daughter has told me so much about you. You are one of Earth’s greatest minds, she says. And apparently you have great power, too.”

 

Alura took Lena’s hand in both of hers.

 

“Welcome to our temporary home, my daughter’s bond mate. I am so very glad she has had people like you around her in our absence.”

 

“Thank you,” Lena said, wiping away an errant tear.

 

Zor-El stood and shook her hand, smiling. He was a tall, grey haired man with an affable smile. He was also the man who had designed the Medusa virus. It was strange how appearances didn’t always hint at what was on the inside.

 

“Welcome to the House of El, Lena Luthor,” he said, standing to pull Kara close in a side-hug.

 

“Thank you both,” Lena said, simply.

 

Someone brought them a tray with hot drinks and sweet pastries, and Lena sampled them carefully. The drink was similar to coffee, but smoother and odd to her palate. Not quite bitter, but not quite sweet.

 

They talked of inconsequential things, about how she met Kara, and how they fell in love, which was a little harder to explain since it was through their dreams.

 

“Lara will be delighted to meet you. And study you. You and Kara are living proof of one of her long-held theories about Kryptonian brains. Kara called it… fangirling? She flailed her limbs a lot when she proved that Kara’s dreams were a sort of psychic link,” Alura said, grinning widely. Astra snorted in amusement.

 

“I am very glad it was not me who developed this link. Lara is… single-minded when she focuses on something,” Astra said, rolling her eyes.

 

Lena blanched, and Kara pulled her close.

 

“Don’t let them scare you, love. Lara is lovely – enthusiastic, yes, but lovely,” Kara said.

 

“So will I be getting probed on an alien ship, or not?” Lena asked, innocently.

 

Astra and Alura both started to laugh, while Kara spat some of her food onto the front of her robes. Zor-El was concentrating very hard on pretending that none of this was happening.

 

“I knew I liked you, Lena Luthor,” Astra said, clapping Lena on the arm. Had Lena been fully human, she might have had to be fished from the core of Jupiter. In the circumstances, however, she just laughed along, their laughter getting louder as Kara turned redder and redder.

 

Kara thought it best that they speak to the President, considering that anyone who might look for Lena today was not going to find her anywhere on Earth. They waited until there was a break in the talks between Earth and the ships, and Lena and Kara asked to speak to J’onn and his team, along with the President.

 

Alex was the first to appear.

 

“Lena? What the hell? How did you get there?” she asked, mouth hanging open.

 

“We’d probably be better to explain to everyone at once,” Lena said weakly.

 

The President appeared shortly afterwards, with J’onn and Cat in tow, and Winn and Maggie also popped in after checking it was okay.

 

“Hi everyone. As you can probably tell, I had a bit of an accidental transportation last night in my sleep,” Lena began.

 

Maggie let out a small squeal, and Winn said “Aw!”

 

The President looked at them both, one eyebrow up.

 

“Miss Luthor, you were saying?”

 

“As I think I might have explained, my gifts are linked to my emotions. It appears that… well, the heart wants what the heart wants, which is why I woke up next to Kara this morning. I can attempt to teleport back to Earth if you wish. I know it might be seen as a security risk since I’ve been privy to a lot of the discussion and planning concerning the Kryptonian fleet,” Lena said.

 

“That’s very sensible, Miss Luthor,” Cat drawled. “Kara Danvers, you and I are going to have a talk when you get back, and believe me when I say it will be a glorious one,” she glared through the viewscreen with the intensity of a thousand suns. Kara swallowed thickly.

 

“Yes, Miss Grant,” she said, trying to adjust glasses that weren’t there. Lena stifled a laugh, and was tickled when she looked up to see everyone else trying to keep a straight face.

 

“It’s good to see you, Supergirl,” Cat said, dropping the stern face. “Madam President, what do you say to Miss Luthor? I can’t see her presence on the Kryptonian ship as being any sort of security risk. We’ve been making great progress so far.”

 

The President tapped her lip, thoughtfully. It was something that Cat did when she was thinking. Lena idly wondered who had picked up the gesture from whom.

 

“I don’t see it as being a problem. Miss Luthor, in the unlikely event that something goes wrong, you have my leave to attempt to transport back to Earth, or the ISS or the Justice League’s Moonbase, should the worst come to the worst. But barring accident or emergency, we’ll expect you and the fleet in… 29 hours or so,” the President said, checking her watch carefully.

 

Kara breathed a tiny sigh of relief. Lena reached over and took her hand.

 

“Thank you, Madam President. I’m so sorry to have put you in such a difficult position,” Lena said.

 

“Never apologise for love, Miss Luthor. Now, we have some work to do, so I will need the room.”

 

“Thank you, ma’am,” Lena said, waving at the others, all of whom were grinning at Kara and Lena’s joined hands slyly. They left the room quickly and a group of Kryptonians shuffled into the room for the next meeting.


	12. Twelve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena and Kara get to know each other a little better, and the fleet is faced with an unexpected threat

* * *

Lena and Kara stood in the corridor outside of the communication room, hand in hand, looking at each other shyly.

  

Lena’s hand was warm and tingling in Kara’s grip.

 

 

“Well. At least we get to spend the day together,” Kara said.

 

“I can’t say I’m going to complain about that outcome, either,” Lena said, chuckling. “I have missed you so much, Kara. I never thought I’d get to see you again.”

 

Kara stopped, pulling her to one side of the ship’s corridor. She tilted Lena’s chin up.

 

“We are both very lucky, I think, that we have been able to meet again, even after death. Not many can say they were reunited after one of them died. Well, Clark did die, I guess, for a year or so. But I never counted that as a death, or at least not afterwards when it became clear it was some sort of healing stasis.”

 

“Yes. I’m almost inclined to believe in your god now, Kara, I have to admit. Since I arrived in National City, my life seems to have turned into a series of more and more unbelievable events. You rising from the dead doesn’t even seem that strange, not when I’m in a spaceship nearing… Mars, is it?” Lena looked around for a window.

 

“Let me find somewhere we can sit and have a good look. You might be able to see Jupiter, too, if we find the right spot,” Kara said. She pulled Lena along in her wake and they settled in a room with a bar at one end. Kara brewed up some of the same coffee-like drink that they’d had earlier, and sat Lena down. She tapped in a command and suddenly the wall next to them turned transparent.

 

The Red Planet was right there. It was close enough to touch. Lena was stunned. She could see the surface clearly, see the winds moving the dust around on the landscape.

 

“I wish I had my phone,” Lena murmured.

 

“The ships have been taking constant pictures and readings, the whole way here. In case the President and the Earth Council didn’t agree and we needed to find a different area to move to,” Kara said. She was wearing a broad smile, obviously delighted by Lena’s exuberance.

 

“I’m sure they’ll be lovely, but how many people get to say they’ve taken a selfie with Mars in the background?” Lena asked, grinning.

 

“One minute,” Kara said, whooshing off and returning a few seconds later. She lifted up a small device and gestured for Lena to move to one side. “Now, I have seen some of your ‘selfies’ before, Lena Luthor. No giving me the finger, no funny faces, no sticking your tongue out at me, okay? This is a solemn occasion. Lena Luthor, the first human to have her picture taken out in the solar system.”

 

Lena smiled, biting her tongue and stifling her usual compulsion to make a stupid face. What even was that? She was an adult, for Christ’s sake.

 

“Now, Jupiter,” Kara said. She took Lena’s hand and led her to the other end of the room, tapping in commands as she had before, and suddenly the world was bright orange and yellow and Lena could see the giant red spot with her own eyes, far away though the planet was. It was a dream come true.

 

“Smile again, Miss Luthor,” Kara said.

 

So Lena did.

 

They took another few ‘fun’ selfies, and before they closed the viewscreens to go and see Kara’s lab, Lena asked if they could do a picture where they were kissing, with Jupiter in the background. They did so, and got so carried away that the camera device took 30 pictures instead of the one they’d intended. One look at Kara’s flushed face, however, when they looked back at the pictures, and Lena was determined that this camera was theirs, now. She wondered idly if it had a video mode, and hoped they’d get a chance to test it out before they got back to Earth.

 

Kara led Lena to a small lab area, desks strewn with some sort of paper, small computers made with crystals, and lab equipment of obviously alien design.

 

Zor-El turned and smiled at Lena before turning back to what looked like a microscope, and another man, just as tall but bearded and a little grizzled looking, turned to look at Kara and narrow his eyes at Lena in confusion. She knew his face from working with him for months. His holographic face, that was. He looked so much like Kal.

 

“Ah! You must be Miss Luthor. I was fascinated to hear that you managed to teleport yourself out to our ships, all while you were unconscious. Imagine what you could do if you were fully conscious and in full control over your abilities,” he said, beaming at them both.  

 

“It’s nice to meet you in person, Jor-El. Your AI has been a great help to me. It’s the reason we realised that my dreams weren’t just dreams,” Lena said, extending a hand. He held it between both of his, patting the back of her hand gently. It was odd, but soothing.

 

“I am most pleased that my niece’s bond-mate is not only one of her planet’s greatest minds, but also one of the most powerful beings on Earth. I did wonder if there would ever be anyone worthy of Kara out here among these distant stars, but it appears that I need not have worried,” Jor-El said.

 

Lena blinked back tears.

 

“Thank you, sir. I am so pleased that you were able to find her. We so very nearly lost her,” Lena said, looking up at Kara. “I owe you and your people everything,” Lena said. Kara touched her lower back gently, rubbing small circles there smoothly.

 

They stayed in the lab a little longer and Lena was impressed – and a little turned on – by Kara’s scientific knowledge, so advanced when compared with her own.

 

After a while, Lena was feeling the effects of meeting so many people, of finding herself so far away from home, so they went back to Kara’s quarters. They changed and wrapped themselves up in each other.

 

“I never thought I’d get to have this,” Lena murmured, as Kara ran her fingers up and down the back of her neck and into her hair.

 

“Neither did I,” Kara said. “I thought that the best I could do was Mon-El. He was the closest in anatomy, in culture, in experience, to anyone I had met since I got to Earth.  I thought he was the best I would ever get. And then… we were so close, you and I, and I did not realise that there was more to it until after he was gone. You were so good to me, Lena, and you never asked for anything in return. That night, before I… before we had dinner – I was thinking about asking you on a date. I was going to, I think. I almost had my courage up, and then I started feeling weird so I thought I should get to the DEO. Before I… fell asleep… I thought of you. I felt safe.”

 

Lena wiped away tears.

 

“You know, they say things happen for a reason and all that, but do you ever just wish that we could have a few more nice things and fewer terribly significant but horribly painful times?” Lena sighed.

 

“Yeah,” Kara chuckled. “But on this one occasion, since it appears I managed to find my family, I am not going to complain to the gods too much.”

 

“Me either,” Lena said, thinking about all that she’d gained. She still counted her abilities as a gain, despite the horrible things she’d chosen to do with them. Perhaps it was the Luthor in her, but she felt it fitting that a person raised by the monstrous Luthors was the one to deliver monstrous (but righteous) justice to them.

 

 “You are thinking about your family again, are you not?” Kara asked.

 

“How did you know? I thought I was the psychic one, here,” Lena said playfully.

 

“I have my crinkle. Your eyes narrow, just a little, and you get a tiny line just here,” Kara said, tracing the outer edge of Lena’s eye. “It is very cute.”

 

“I love you, Kara,” Lena said.

 

“I love you too, Lena. You amaze me.”

 

They fell into each other then, pulled in by what felt like gravity, and the kisses that followed were the sort that could change a person’s life. Kara kissed like she really meant it, and the depth of feeling she tried to get across was palpable. Her effect on Lena was indescribable, and when Kara moved her mouth to Lena’s neck, she moaned.

 

“You’re killing me,” she said, grumbling.

 

“You know what they say,” Kara said, running her tongue along Lena’s collarbones. “The little death is the best kind.”

“Do they say that?” Lena asked, but Kara’s mouth was at her breast and suddenly she was speechless.

 

They spent hours making love, two super-powered beings clashing as they travelled faster than light through the solar system. Kara was able to bring all of her power to bear without worrying about breaking Lena, and with Lena’s powers, she could touch Kara all over at once. It was transcendent, and Lena began to dread returning to Earth. She wanted to stay here, in this exact spot, in bed with Kara until the end of time.

 

Lena fell asleep at some point, and was woken by crystalline noises emitting from the ship’s speakers.

 

“What is that?” she asked, blearily. Belatedly, she noticed that her head was on Kara’s naked breast. “Sorry, didn’t mean to talk to your nipple,” she said, making no effort to move.

 

Kara’s chest rumbled under her head.

 

“My nipple says to tell you it does not mind. And that was the dinner bell. Are you hungry?”

 

Lena’s stomach growled loudly, answering the question for her.

 

“Come on then, let us go,” Kara said, speeding out of the bed and into her clothes in less than a second. Lena’s head dropped to the bed abruptly, its support gone, and she swore quietly under her breath.

 

“I was comfortable, Kara,” she whined, before transporting herself a few feet and dressing using her telekinesis. Kara stared at her, biting her bottom lip.

 

“That is totally hot,” she said, grinning.

 

“Thank you,” Lena said. “It’s totally hot when you do it, too.”

 

They went to the dining area hand in hand, and Lena sat next to Kara at a small table where Astra and Alura were already sitting, each eating a small, strange object on a stick.

 

“What is that?” Lena asked.

 

“It is an insect from Krypton. There were huge amounts of them in storage in Argo City, because there was almost a plague of them the year before Krypton was destroyed.”

 

“Oh,” Lena said, screwing up her face in distaste.

 

“Do not knock it until you have tried it,” Kara said, grinning. When someone passed, a server, Lena assumed, Kara grabbed a plate of the things, putting two in front of Lena.

 

Lena lifted it up, noting with some relief that it was only the soft inner parts of the insect that were eaten. She didn’t think she could do crunchy insect. She took an exploratory bite, and was delighted by the sweet, delicious flavour.

 

“It tastes like shrimp!” she exclaimed, smiling. She loved shrimp, and Kara was aware of that. It was one of the few things she ate outside of her mostly-vegan diet (before her powers, of course).

 

“See! I knew you would like it,” Kara said, grinning. She had just stuffed a whole one in her mouth, and was talking around the mouthful. It was both adorable and disgusting. Lena wiped some juice from Kara’s chin, chuckling.

 

“You are good for my daughter,” Alura noted, quietly.

 

“I’m glad you think so,” Lena said, smiling. “I love her so much. When she died… I was lost.”

 

“I can imagine,” Alura said. “We sent her off in that pod, in the hope that she would live and prosper on your planet, but there were no guarantees, of course. As she found out, being caught in the Phantom Zone for such a long time. She is the true legacy of our planet, the best of all of us. Since she has been with us, she has of course been joyful, because neither of us expected to see the other again. But there was a light missing, and now I see why. She was missing you.”

 

Lena looked at Kara, who was in deep conversation with Astra.

 

“I love her so much, Mrs Zor-El,” Lena said, tentatively. “She is the reason I have felt any joy these past few years. Since I met her, my life has just transformed into this… totally different thing. Before, it was cold and empty, and I tried to fill the void with alcohol and sometimes, a night with a stranger. But Kara came along and suddenly I had friends. I had someone who cared how my day was. And of course, she had to be an alien.”

 

Alura’s gaze turned frosty.

 

“Please, don’t mistake me,” Lena said, hands up. “I haven’t ever had a problem with aliens. But my family – did Kara ever speak to you about them?”

 

“She did,” Alura said.

 

“They wanted her dead. My brother killed her cousin, Kal-El, and he came back to life afterwards, but that was only because of his Kryptonian biology. Lex – my brother – he would have exterminated all alien life on Earth, and my mother would have helped him. She killed aliens, too. She killed Kara.”

 

“I know this,” Alura said. “Or at least, Kara expected that it was your mother.”

 

“She’s dead, now,” Lena said, tonelessly. “So is he.”

 

Alura looked at her, and her gaze was like a knife, cutting through any bullshit that Lena would normally throw up as a shield for her true self. She looked for the longest time, and Lena, instead of stuttering and turning away, let her look.

 

“You killed them?” Alura asked, but it wasn’t really a question.

 

“Yes,” Lena said. “And over 400 others, in the end. I made it my mission to end the movement that wanted to hurt aliens. I made my way through their facilities, and I reprogrammed people who could be reprogrammed.”

 

“What does that mean?” Alura asked.

 

“I… I have telepathy. Your people are immune to it, so you have nothing to fear from me. I used it to change the minds of those who wanted to hurt aliens. Except for those who believed it down to their core. Those, I had to kill. And by the time I found their last facility, I… I was tired, and there was a boy there who sneaked up on me. He hit me with something, and I blacked out. I’d only seen a handful of people in that place, only changed a few minds. I couldn’t control my power when he hit me, so it burst out, killing everyone there. Except for me and the boy. Kara’s friend, J’onn, he found me along with Kal-El, and they brought me home. And then they found a huge Kryptonite bomb in that underground facility. If it hadn’t been shielded, god only knows how much damage it would have done.”

 

Alura regarded her silently, face blank.

 

“You are a strong person, Lena Luthor. If I had heard your story when it was still my job to judge those accused of criminal acts, I might have sent you to the Phantom Zone. As I did my sister. But I have learned a lot since then. Since I mistakenly sent her away to hide what was happening with our planet. I will never be able to make up for that. But you, like Astra… you chose to make the hard decisions. To hurt a few to save many. Only our gods can judge us for such actions, or so I think, now. I think you have judged yourself harshly enough for those acts and for any others you or your family have taken in your life. I will not judge you. I will thank you, however. Because the pain you have caused yourself – it was in aid of my daughter and of my people. I will not forget that, Lena Luthor.”

 

“Thank you,” Lena said, tears in her eyes. “I can’t tell you what that means to me. I will never make up for it, for those deaths, but if I help your people to find a new home, perhaps it will make it a little easier to live with.”

 

Alura touched her hand, squeezing it, and Lena closed her eyes, a few tears leaking from the edges of her eyes. Kara touched her shoulder, then, and she turned to smile at her.

 

“ _Khap zhao rrip, Lena-te_ ,” she murmured.

 

“I love you too, Kara Zor-El,” she said, smiling.

 

“When will you be bonded, Little One?” Astra asked. Kara spluttered, her drink covering the table in front of her. She stood, trying to wipe it up, and in doing so upended the table entirely. Lena just managed to grab her plate, rescuing her remaining space shrimp from certain death.

 

“Little One, sit down before you end up destroying the entire ship,” Astra said, sighing. She cleaned up the mess in a rush of super-speed, and brought them all some more of the shrimp and a bowl each of some sort of stew with huge hunks of bread.

 

“It is going to take time to get used to that,” Alura murmured.

 

“The super-speed?” Lena asked, smiling.

 

“Yes. I understand we can fly, too. And shoot beams of great heat from our eyes. I am a woman of academia and of justice. Physical pursuits have never been my strongest point.”

 

“Well, now you could lift this ship on your back,” Lena said, shrugging. “I’ve seen your daughter stop a million-tonne frigate from taking off – a frigate with seriously powerful FTL engines. She lifted Fort Rozz single-handedly and flew it into space.”

 

“Rao,” Alura breathed. “It is hard to understand the full magnitude of this power,” she said. “I fear touching anything too hard in case I crush it.”

 

“It took a long time for me, Mom,” Kara said, “but you’ll get used to it. We will have to design stronger building materials and furnishings and – well, everything, for our people’s new home.”

 

“I might be able to help with that,” Lena said. “I designed a new type of concrete that can withstand my power, so it should be able to contain a Kryptonian’s strength.”

 

“You amaze me,” Kara breathed.

 

“It was nothing,” Lena said. “I adapted the idea from a Daxamite material. It wasn’t really an original idea.”

 

“Still,” Kara said. “To make any material that I cannot break? There is barely anything on Earth that is that strong.”

 

“There is at least one more thing now,” Lena said, grinning.

 

“You see, mom? Aunt Astra? She’s a genius,” Kara said proudly.

 

Lena blushed. “Stop, Kara. You are just as smart as I am,” she insisted.

 

“Maybe, but I haven’t done a thing with my brains, and here you are, changing the lives of two different species with yours,” Kara said.

 

“Stop, Kara,” Lena begged. “Or else I’ll start telling your family about the Supergirl merchandise your sister has collected.”

 

“What does that mean, Kara? Merchandise?” Alura asked, eyes narrowing. Lena grinned triumphantly, and Kara changed the subject rather abruptly.

 

They went to the bar area after they finished eating, where they’d taken pictures earlier that day. They could still see Mars from the rear-side view screen, and Lena stared at it, looking at it using her powers, looking into the planet and underneath its surface.

 

“There _is_ life on Mars,” she said to herself, quietly.

 

“Of course there is, sweetie. You know J’onn,” Kara said, laughing.

 

“I know, but… I guess I just hadn’t quite put that though together with the real Mars. Sometimes half of my life feels like a dream, you know?” Lena said, watching the White Martians tend to some sort of crop underground, their children playing and adults working. It was a strange sight. The White Martians were the boogeyman of this solar system, as far as she was concerned, having wiped out the Greens almost completely. But there they were, living as normal a life as any other species, raising their children, working and growing food. They didn’t seem quite as scary to her, now.

 

“I know what you mean,” Kara said, dreamily, staring at Lena.

 

“I love you,” Lena blurted.

 

“I love you too,” Kara said. “You amaze me. I can’t believe you’re here. Your powers are just… amazing.”

 

“Says the woman who can fly and lift millions of tonnes? Yeah, _I’m_ the extraordinary one.”

 

“Lena, you told me that you could kill Superman if you wanted. That means you are stronger than me. I cannot transport myself millions of miles in a heartbeat. I cannot read minds or move objects with my mind, or persuade people to change their minds. You can do all of those things, and I am sure you have not reached the full potential of your gifts yet,” Kara said.

 

“Well, time will tell,” Lena said. “But let’s not play ‘who’s the strongest’ unless you want a practical demonstration, preferably in bed.”

 

Kara chuckled, one eyebrow up, and she stood suddenly, lifting Lena into her arms and speeding to her room.

 

It was past 6am, Earth time, when Lena woke. She was in Kara’s arms, and when she pressed the button turning the wall into a viewscreen, she saw the moon. The dark side of it, to be precise. She stared at it, stunned, Kara’s arms tight around her, and she felt tears fall from her eyes.

 

“Lena? Are you okay, baby?” Kara asked, turning Lena in her arms and looking at her in concern.

 

“I’m fine, honey. Just… I’m happy,” Lena said. “I love you. We’re almost home, and I’m in your arms, and you’re not dead, and the rest of the Luthors are gone, and I just… I’m so happy that I don’t know what to do with my feelings. So I guess they’re coming out in my tears.”

 

“Did you know that research has proven that tears shed through sadness are different from tears of frustration or pain or happiness?” Kara asked, smiling. She leaned down and licked the tears from Lena’s cheek. “Sweet,” she said, smiling down at Lena.

 

“Do you think that Rao meant for me to be with you?” Lena asked. “I know that you believe in him. Is that what you believe?”

 

“I do,” Kara said. “I was not really raised to believe in soulmates, or not exactly. But when my Aunt Lara did those tests, I realised that I had been wrong. We have to be soulmates. We literally talked to each other in dreams, Lena. It’s _so_ rare for that to happen. I don’t even possess telepathy. No Kryptonian does, by design. So yes, I believe it.”

 

“I think I do, too,” Lena said, a little shaky. “The things that have happened – it’s all just too outlandish. It has to have been a god, to bring you back to me after you died, to give me the power to fight my family and end Cadmus. I prayed for you to come back to me, and somehow you did.”

 

“I could not have stayed away, not even if I tried,” Kara said, smiling.

 

They both stared out at the Moon, watching it loom larger and larger in the viewscreen. As they watched, the ship moved to just the right spot, and Earth appeared just beyond it.

 

“ _Rao_ ,” Kara breathed, eyes wide.

 

“Indeed,” Lena said. “We’re home.”

 

They made love under the combined light of the moon and the Earth, their bodies moving against each other, their hearts thumping in harmony. For a while the only thing that could be heard were cries of each other’s names and the sounds of their bodies moving against the silky sheets.

 

A little later, they went to have some breakfast in the dining room, but were interrupted by a Kryptonian man who Lena didn’t recognise, telling them that they were needed urgently in the room where Alura and others were still negotiating with the humans. They exchanged a look, and both made their way as quickly as they could without utilising their powers.

 

They entered to find a scene of chaos. Alura was trying to maintain order, but everyone was yelling. Lena thought for a moment, working out how to do it, and she produced a tone high enough from the air that it made everyone in the room wince (herself included) and go quiet.

 

“What’s happening here, mother?” Kara asked, and she was all Supergirl, now. Strong and tall and commanding. Alura looked at her, a little surprised.

 

“There is a rogue nation on your planet. They are in the process of firing missiles at our fleet, according to your President. We have shields, but they will not stand against nuclear weaponry.”

 

“Shit,” Lena muttered. “Who is it?”

 

“North Korea,” the President replied, from the viewscreen. “We don’t have enough time to get anyone there to stop them, Miss Luthor. Do you think there’s anything you can do? I don’t know the limitations of your powers.”

 

“Neither do I, in truth,” Lena said. “But I can try.”

 

There was another screen in the room, this one showing Earth’s surface. As they watched, several explosions occurred at once in a small space. They couldn’t see the missiles, but they knew they were coming.

 

“Do you have any space suits?” Lena asked, turning to Alura.

 

“Yes. We have one for every person on board.”

 

“Good. Get everyone into them. If I can’t deflect the missiles, you should be able to survive outside the ship. I don’t know if you can generate thrust in space – if you can, you can fly back to Earth. But if not, at least you will have enough air for my people to try to save you.”

 

“Send a message to all ships,” Alura snapped, and a Kryptonian in uniform jumped in surprise. “Tell them to do what Miss Luthor advises.”

 

He started typing out the message, and Lena turned her attention to Kara.

 

“I need a suit. I’m going to go out there, and I’m going to try to deflect the missiles or transport them away somewhere. Is there anywhere that they won’t hurt anyone?”

 

“The Phantom Zone?” Kara said, brow furrowed.

 

“Okay. What are the spatial co-ordinates?” Lena asked. She didn’t know if she was capable of transporting anything to specific co-ordinates, but she was familiar with the stars that stretched between Earth and Krypton, now, and she thought that she might very well be able to send the missiles away if she concentrated.

 

“I am coming with you,” Kara said.

 

“You can’t,” Lena protested.

 

“I can, and I am,” Kara said. Lena threw her hands up. “Someone bring us two suits,” she said, barking at the junior officers around her. Two of them set off at a run, and Lena suppressed a giggle with difficulty. A few minutes later, they were back, carrying two suits each. Kara and Lena wasted no time in stripping and putting the suits on over their underclothes.

 

“Are there comms inside this thing?” Lena asked.

 

“Yes,” Alura confirmed.

 

“If I can’t do anything about the missiles, I will let you know, and you all need to abandon ship, okay?”

 

Alura nodded, her jaw tight. She turned to another aide, and a few minutes later she came back with a small device.

 

“This is a remote for the on-board transmat portal. If you have any problems getting back, press this,” she said, showing Kara and Lena which button they needed to press.

 

“I’m coming too,” Astra said, from behind them. “I remember how to fly, and I can help bring Lena back to the ship if she is incapacitated.” She was already wearing a space suit, so Lena shrugged.

 

“Fine,” she said. “Grab my hands.”

 

“I love you, Lena Luthor,” Kara said. “Let’s go get’em.”

 

Lena smiled, and then closed her eyes, picturing the empty space between Earth and the Moon. She concentrated hard, and a moment later she was floating. She opened her eyes, seeing only empty black around her, and the Earth in front. And Kara and Astra floating next to her.

 

“How did they get missiles that can get this far?” Kara asked, her voice coming through into Lena’s suit, crackling slightly.

 

“They must have had help,” Lena said. “Maybe alien tech? They couldn’t even shoot as far as the US, before.” Her voice crackled through the comms.

 

“Are you ready, Miss Luthor?” Astra asked, as they started to make out the shapes of the missiles approaching.

 

“I am,” Lena said, concentrating. She thought of the Phantom Zone, the co-ordinates Kara had given her, the maps of the area that she’d looked at with Jor-El so long ago when they were trying to find the Kryptonian fleet. She concentrated hard, and the missiles disappeared. But so did Lena. She found herself floating in front of a wormhole, watching the missiles disappear into it, and then she felt its pull on her body. She began to fly towards it, against her will, moving faster and faster.

 

“Shit,” she said, closing her eyes so she didn’t have to see the wormhole looming ahead. She took a deep breath, feeling exhaustion in every cell of her body. She concentrated again, her mind searching for Kara, and she felt herself move to that in-between place, where she went as she moved from one place to the other. She thought of Kara, her eyes, her hands, and she tried to stay awake, but she couldn’t even lift her hand anymore, she was so tired. She thought of Kara, and she saw Kara’s eyes in her mind, and then she was gone. Under, away, and lost in the dark.


	13. Thirteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We find out what happened to Lena.

* * *

Kara floated in space, frantic as the missiles disappeared, and Lena with them.

 

“Where the hell did she go?” she asked, turning her body ponderously to look at Astra.

 

“I do not know, Little One,” she said. Kara couldn’t see her face through the reflective faceplate of the suit.

 

She prayed silently to Rao, to bring Lena back to her, to keep her safe. It seemed to take an age, but Rao answered. Lena appeared in front of her, body limp, and Kara grabbed her.

 

“Astra, take her arm,” Kara said. Astra did so, and Kara pulled the transmat remote from the suit pocket. She pressed the button and they all disappeared, all three of them rematerializing inside the ship.

 

“Help me!” Kara yelled, pulling off her helmet and lifting Lena into her arms. “I need a medic.”

 

She moved to her Aunt Lara’s lab at super-speed, and Lara opened the door, startled.

  
“What has happened to her?” she asked, eyes wide.

 

“She moved the missiles to the Phantom Zone. She transported herself there, too, by accident. And then back again.”

 

Lara nodded.

 

“Put her on the table,” she said, moving to the side of the room and using a cleanser on her hands before moving to Lena’s side. “Take off the helmet.”

 

Kara pulled off the helmet and cried out as she saw blood pouring from Lena’s ears, eyes, mouth and nose.

 

“Fetch me something to staunch the bleeding,” Lara said, searching through her equipment and coming up with a medical scanner. She scanned Lena’s head, shaking her head. Kara and Astra were busy trying to stop the bleeding with clean gauze and pressure, but it wasn’t working.

 

“Step back,” Lara commanded, grabbing another device and using it first on Lena’s forehead, then her temple. She frowned, scanning the areas again, and then did the same on Lena’s cheekbones and behind her ears, and further down on her neck. She sighed in relief.

 

“What happened to her?” Kara asked, frantic.

 

“She overextended herself. She is unused to transporting such distances, let alone carrying tonnes of material with her. And she had to do the jump twice. Given time, I believe it will not cause her any issues, but to do such a thing while under stress and to do it twice – several of her blood vessels burst. I have repaired them, but she will need to sleep for a while.”

 

“No,” Kara said, shaking her head. “I should not have let her do this,” she said, tears dripping down her face.

 

“She is alive,” Lara said, grasping Kara’s shoulders. “She is well. She needs rest, only. She is strong, Kara, and she saved the lives of a million and a half Kryptonians. She deserves a rest. I will not close my eyes until hers are opened.”

 

“Okay,” Kara said. “Okay. I should go and report to the President. But I will be right back.”

 

“I will be here, Kara,” Lara assured her. “I will be here with her.”

 

“Hold her hand, will you? I do not want her to be alone.”

 

Astra took one hand, sitting on the side of the bed, and Lara took the other. Kara nodded gratefully, leaning down to kiss Lena gently on the forehead.

 

“I will be back soon, love,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “I love you.”

 

She turned on her heel and sped to the video room, finding her mother and father and many others waiting, and the President and Cat Grant and some of the DEO waiting there.

 

“She moved the missiles to the Phantom Zone,” Kara said, to everyone. “She transported herself there, too. But she made it back. She over-exerted herself, and she was bleeding a lot, but my Aunt Lara has managed to stop the bleeding and is keeping her under close observation.”

 

“Thank god,” the President breathed. There were sighs of relief all through the room.

 

“Your bond-mate has saved us again,” Alura said. “I am glad you found her, Kara, for more reasons than only one.”

 

“Me too,” Kara said. “What are you doing about the North Koreans?” she asked, looking at the President. Cat Grant bristled at her tone, but Kara channelled some of her own inner Cat, lifting an eyebrow, eyes hard. Cat subsided, grumbling.

 

“We have troops on the way. Not just the US, but all of the other countries who agreed to your presence here. North Korea will be ringed with ships and troops in a matter of hours. We believe that they used the majority of their nuclear arsenal in this strike. If they do not stand down, they will be stood down. Their leader may be insane, but I don’t believe he has a death wish,” President Marsdin said.

 

“Thank you, Madam President,” Alura said smoothly. “I am heartened by this sign of your support for our alliance.”

 

“You are most welcome, Madam Zor-El,” the President said, nodding. “It is in our interests to support you, after all. And I have no desire to see a war between our people because of the foolishness of one leader.”

 

Alura inclined her head. Kara decided to take her leave, nodding at her parents. She walked back at normal speed through the ship’s corridors, still in her space suit. She went into Lara’s lab, finding things much as she left them, except that Lara was scanning Lena again.

 

Lara looked up at her.

 

“She is fine. I just wanted to check on her. Her heart is stronger, but she needs a lot of rest.”

 

“Thank you, Aunt Lara.”

 

“There is no need to thank me, Little One. She is family now. And she put herself at risk for each and every one of our remaining people. I will give her the best care I can.”

 

Kara nodded, grabbing another chair and sitting next to Lena, smoothing her hair away from her face. She looked pale and exhausted, but no longer like she was dying.

 

It was a few hours later when the ship’s engines stopped abruptly. Kara looked up, startled.

 

“All is well, Little One. We are in orbit,” Astra said.

 

“Oh,” Kara said. “I cannot believe we are here.”

 

“Nor I,” Astra said. “It has been a long time.”

 

“Yes,” Kara said. “I do not know if we should stay here, or bring her back to Earth.”

 

“I think we should go to Earth,” Lara said. “Your people know their own anatomy better. And I can bring my own equipment, to help.”

 

“Okay,” Kara said. “I will go to see if I can set it up.”

 

Astra nodded at her, taking Lena’s hand when Kara reluctantly let go.

 

“She will be fine,” Astra assured her. Kara smiled weakly in response, leaving before she could second-guess herself. She made her way to the video room, finding it almost empty. Her mother was there, looking exhausted.

 

“Hello, darling,” she said, standing and kissing Kara on the cheek. “How is she?”

 

“Still unconscious,” Kara said. “Have you made any agreements as to who is going to the surface yet?”

 

“Tentatively,” Alura said. “Your President suggested that you should bring your bond-mate to… the DEO, is it?”

 

“That’s why I’m here. I’d like to bring her to the DEO to be monitored by Alex and my foster mom. And I would like to bring my Aunt Lara, too, if that’s possible.”

 

“Of course,” the President said, from the other side of the screen. “You may bring any of your family members, if you wish. But please advise your Aunt Astra that she is essentially on probation. One false move and we will send her back to the ship.”

 

“Of course,” Kara said, bowing slightly. “Mother, I suggest we bring Lara, Astra, you, father and Jor-El. Kal will want to meet his parents. Does that seem fair, for a first meeting?”

 

“It does,” Alura said. “Madam President?”

 

“Agreed,” the President said.

 

“I think we should be ready in about half an hour,” Kara said. “Is that enough notice, or should we wait a little longer?”

 

“30 minutes is fine,” the President said. “I look forward to it, Supergirl.”

 

The screen switched off, then, and Alura breathed a sigh of relief. “Your people like to talk about every detail,” she said.

 

“Yes, they do,” Kara said, smiling. “They like their bureaucracy.”

 

Alura smiled wanly. “I need a week of sleep.”

 

“A few hours in the sun and you will be fine,” Kara said. “You will never feel anything like it, I promise you.”

 

“Let us go, then, daughter,” Alura said, smiling. Kara took her hand, and they walked back to Lara’s lab, collecting Jor and Zor-El on the way. They explained their agreement to the others, and Lara did a number of scans to make doubly sure that Lena was stable enough to be moved. Kara lifted Lena’s limp form from the bed, making her way behind her parents to the transmat portal. Jor-El pressed a few buttons on the control panel, and the portal sprung to life. Alura and Zor-El took a deep breath.

 

“You should go through first, Kara,” Alura said. “We’ll be right behind you.”

 

Kara nodded, stepping forward. She noticed belatedly that she was still wearing her spacesuit with nothing underneath, but she figured that the DEO would have something she could change into. She stepped through the portal, closing her eyes and breathing deeply against the sensation of the bottom falling out of her stomach. She opened her eyes a few seconds later, and was heartened and devastated and overwhelmed to see the faces of all the people she’d been missing since her ‘death’. She was startled when they began to applaud and cheer. She flushed, unsure what to do with herself, but Alex made the decision for her, pushing through the crowd with a gurney for Lena. Kara put Lena on the gurney reverently, allowing herself enough time to hug Alex, both sisters putting their foreheads together and sighing in relief. Then Alura and Zor-El stepped through, followed by Astra, Lara, and Jor-El.

 

“Okay, everyone. Please move out of the way and allow our guests to meet the President,” J’onn said, stepping out of the crowd and shooing everyone out. They dispersed quickly, and Kara let go of Alex.

 

“I missed you,” she said, wiping away tears. “I missed you so much.”

 

“You stupid-ass Kryptonian,” Alex said, tears pouring from her eyes. “You died, you asshole!”

 

Kara’s mother looked over, one eyebrow up, and Kara laughed.

 

“Come on. We need to get Lena to the infirmary,” Kara said. There were a whole lot of tearful reunions to come, but Lena was her first priority. She pushed the gurney out of the small room where the transmat portal was situated, noting the numerous guards armed with Kryptonite weapons. She hoped that there would not be any reason for them to be used. J’onn was leading her family to a large room that he used for briefing the full staff of the DEO, and Kara nodded at him before turning down the corridor to the infirmary.

 

She deposited Lena gently on a hospital bed, admonishing Dr Hamilton not to leave her alone until Kara had time to come back. And then she went with Alex to the room where the Kryptonians and the humans were meeting for the first time.

 

What followed was perhaps the strangest day of Kara’s life. She reunited with her friends and Earth family, all of whom, at one point or another, cried in relief at seeing her alive. She hugged Alex for a full hour, her sister not wanting to let her go any more than Kara did. Their tears could have filled a reservoir. Cat Grant gave her a severe talking-to, and Kara endured it patiently, head hanging, until Cat pulled her close and hugged her, calling her a stupid lump of an alien and making her promise not to die again.

 

“I will do my best,” Kara said, smiling. Cat glared at her and then smiled when the President came up behind her and wrapped an arm around Cat’s waist. “Oh, wow. Are you two…?” she asked, gesturing between the President and Cat.

 

“We are,” Cat confirmed, smugly. She turned her head and kissed the President, and Kara squee’d loudly.

 

“That is totally amazing!” Kara exclaimed, floating a foot off the floor in excitement.

 

Cat rolled her eyes. “I have no idea how you managed to keep your identity secret for any amount of time.”

 

Kara shrugged. “What can I say? People don’t see Supergirl when they look at the girl in argyle. In fact, you are still the only person to work it out, Miss Queen of all Media,” Kara said, slyly.

 

Cat preened, and the President chuckled. It was a fun moment in an otherwise baffling day.

 

Kara watched, in tears, as Kal was introduced to his parents by J’onn. Kara was stunned to see her usually stoic aunt and uncle cry as they met their son for the first time in 38 years (or thereabouts). Kal was speechless, and the small family ended up sitting in a quiet corner talking intently. Kara watched them fondly.

 

“I like him better like this,” Astra said, appearing beside Kara. “He is much too proud, normally. But now there are a million and a half of us, he is not so special. And he shows emotion!”

 

“I know what you mean,” Kara murmured. “He can be a bit smug. But he is not the only one, now. And he is meeting his family for the first time in his life. That is bound to take some getting used to.”

 

“Indeed,” Astra said.

 

Astra’s first meeting with Alex was a little… stiff. But she soon warmed up, telling Alex that she would have done the same thing in her place. She was polite and pleasant to Maggie, too, and Kara let out a sigh of relief at the sight. This particular reunion could have gone very wrong, she knew.

 

The moment that would always stick with her was introducing Alura and Zor-El to Eliza and Alex. In a perfect world, Jeremiah would have been there, too, but he was still in a DEO facility somewhere recuperating and being de-programmed. Kara didn’t want to think about the kind of torture he’d endured. She knew very well herself how merciless Lillian Luthor and Cadmus had been.

 

Her mother, when introduced to Eliza and Alex, uncharacteristically broke down. Even Zor-El was startled by it, and put his arm around his wife, frowning.

 

“You saved our daughter. You gave her a life here, and protected her when I could not. I can never, ever thank you enough,” she said, in between sobs.

 

Eliza, being the kind of woman she was, wrapped Alura up in her arms, pulling Alex in, too.

 

“You gave us the greatest gift we could ever have imagined,” Eliza said. “We got a wonderful daughter from the stars. You have nothing to thank us for.”

 

Kara’s father pulled her into a hug, and she noticed that he was trembling slightly in her arms.

 

“I can never thank them enough,” he whispered.

 

“You don’t have to,” Kara said, softly. “They’re amazing people, it’s just who they are.”

 

He nodded, and Kara held him a little bit tighter until his trembling subsided. He shook hands with Eliza and Alex, and told them that he looked forward to meeting Jeremiah when he had time to recover.

 

Later, she would look back on that day and not remember much of it. It had started with nuclear weapons and almost losing Lena, and the rest of the day was a blur of overwhelming emotion and reunions with all of the people that she loved, a sort of collision of her old life and her new life. It was surreal and confusing and after a while she had to leave the room, going to see Lena in the hope of some peace and quiet. Her aunt Lara insisted on joining her, bringing her medical kit, and Alex and Eliza followed them, too.

 

They entered the infirmary quietly, finding Agent Vasquez sitting with Lena, reading to her, bizarrely enough. The normally stoic agent turned, smiling, and Kara pulled her up and into a hug.

 

“It’s good to see you, Supergirl,” Vasquez said.

 

“Likewise, Susan,” Kara said. “Where is the doctor?”

 

Doctor Hamilton came back at that moment, stopping short when she saw how many people were in the room.

 

“Supergirl. Lena is doing well. I think she might wake, soon.”

 

“Thank you, Dr Hamilton,” Kara said. She did a quick introduction, and the doctor nodded respectfully at Lara. Kara had spoken to Dr Hamilton before about her aunt’s medical expertise, and she knew that the doctor would want to talk shop with Lara for weeks, if she could.

 

“May I?” Lara asked, pulling out her scanner and gesturing towards Lena.

 

“Of course,” the doctor said, standing back. Everyone else watched with interest, including Agent Vasquez, as Lara scanned Lena, humming to herself quietly.

 

“She is well. She is waking,” Lara said. The doctor drew her into a corner, talking animatedly with her about the scanner and the other medical tech she had brought with her. Kara rolled her eyes, intent on Lena.

 

She was stirring. She twitched, then moved her right hand, and then she opened her eyes.

 

“Kara?” she breathed, looking around her in confusion. Kara squeezed her hand.

 

“I am here, _:zrhueiao_ ,” she said, and Lena smiled.

 

“Did we get the bad guys, or whatever?” Lena said, slurring her words slightly.

 

Kara laughed.

 

“Yes. We got the bad guys. You, my love, are going to need to get that power of yours under control,” Kara said, chiding gently.

 

“I know,” Lena said sheepishly. “I just… I was so frightened that they were going to kill everyone in the fleet.”

 

“I know,” Kara said. “But I cannot survive without you, Lena. So you cannot just do things like that. You need to get it under control in case you need to use it again.”

 

“I’ll try,” Lena said, smiling. “I love you, Kara.”

 

Kara stood back, then, to allow Alex, Eliza and Lara to fuss over Lena, scanning her and babbling to one another about her left parahippocampal gyrus and the energy she needed to sustain her powers.

 

“You need much, much more practice with the teleportation, Lena,” was their conclusion. They lectured her earnestly, and Kara stood back, smiling at Lena’s consternation at being surrounded by well-meaning but slightly terrifying relatives of Kara’s.

 

“Guys, could you just… stand back and let her breathe?” Kara asked, quietly. “I think this is a little overwhelming. Especially since Lena does not really know you, Eliza, or you, Lara.”

 

“Oh,” Eliza and Lara said, in unison.

 

“So, Lena Luthor, love of my life, meet my foster mother, Eliza Danvers.”

 

Lena smiled, holding a hand out to Eliza, who took it in both of hers.

 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs Danvers,” she said.

 

“You found my daughter out there in space, Lena Luthor. You get to call me Eliza,” Kara’s foster mother said fondly. Lena blushed.

 

“And I am Lara Lor-Van, and I am sorry I was not able to meet you on the ship,” Lara said, taking Lena’s other hand. “You are Kara’s bondmate, her soulmate, in fact. Which means that you are family, my dear Lena.”

 

“Oh,” Lena said, eyes wide. “I… I’m honoured, Mrs Lor-Van.”

 

“Please call me Lara,” she said, squeezing Lena’s hand tightly.

 

“Lara it is,” Lena said, nodding.

 

“So you’re Kara’s soulmate?” Eliza asked, turning to look at Kara with her patented ‘disappointed’ look. “And you didn’t tell me about this, Kara?”

 

“It is something of a long story,” Kara said, smiling. “I did not deliberately hide it from you. In fact, if you sit down with Lara, I’m sure she will be more than happy to explain it to you. But for now, I was thinking that maybe I could take Lena home and we could get some rest? If that’s okay with her physicians?”

 

The women looked at each other a little sheepishly and nodded. Dr Hamilton nodded at Kara gravely from a corner.

 

“Are you okay with that?” Kara asked, looking at Lena.

 

“Yes,” Lena breathed, looking relieved. She got up on unsteady legs, and Kara shot to her side, supporting her. “We should go downstairs first, and say goodbye to everyone. If you can manage?”

 

“I can. As long as you’re with me,” Lena said, looking up at Kara lovingly.

 

“I love you,” Kara murmured, leaning down to kiss Lena gently.

 

There was a chorus of ‘aahs’ in the room and Kara rolled her eyes. She turned to glare at her sister, foster mother and aunt, all of whom looked back, unrepentant, with huge grins on their faces. She walked Lena slowly to the elevator, followed by Alex, Lara and Eliza, and they made their way to the room where the pseudo-reception was happening. As soon as they stepped inside, the room fell silent. Kara looked around quizzically, and then applause broke out. J’onn stepped forward, Alura, Astra, Cat Grant and the President beside him. He held his hand up for silence.

 

“I know I speak for all of us when I say that we owe a debt of gratitude to you, Miss Luthor. You saved a million and a half lives, and you saved this alliance, which would have been doomed if those missiles had hit. I can only thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

 

Lena blushed. Kara smiled down at her, proud of her bondmate in a way that she couldn’t fully articulate.

 

The President stepped forward. She took Lena’s hand in hers.

 

“There is a medal in your future, Lena Luthor, for the good work you’ve done in aiding the DEO in wiping out Cadmus, and for your actions today, in preventing what could have been a catastrophic attack on our allies. You are a true hero, and I am honoured to know you. I’ve been asked by my dear Cat to tell you that your official superhero name is ‘Blink’, since you can disappear in the blink of an eye. She insists on these things, I have no idea why. You have the gratitude of the United States and of the Earth Council for your actions.”

 

Lena was crying quietly, a huge smile on her face, and Kara squeezed her tightly as applause broke out again.

 

“You are my hero, Lena Luthor,” Kara breathed, knowing Lena would hear it. She turned a brighter shade of pink, and Kara smiled.

 

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to take Lena home now for some rest,” Kara said. “We’ll be here bright and early tomorrow, if that’s okay with everyone?”

 

Kara caught her mother’s eye and she nodded, smiling indulgently, as did the President, Cat, and J’onn.

 

“Goodnight, everyone,” she said, sweeping Lena into her arms and shooting out of the room. She was halfway across town when she suddenly remembered that she probably didn’t have an apartment anymore, given that she’d technically died.

 

“Um, Lee?” she asked, sheepishly.

 

“Yes, darling?” Lena replied.

 

“Is my apartment gone?”

 

“Yes,” Lena said, sadly. “Alex cleared it out a month after you… left.”

 

“Okay. Then I guess we’re going to your place.”

 

Lena nodded, giving her directions, and they landed on her balcony. Kara was going to break the lock, but Lena just frowned at it and it clicked open.

 

“That’s a neat trick,” Kara said, impressed.

 

“It’s nothing, really,” Lena said. “I set my apartment on fire the first time I used my powers.”

 

“That sounds about right,” Kara said, smiling. “I burned up a whole section of the beach when I was a teenager. Heat vision. The sand turned to glass – it was really cool.”

 

“That’s amazing,” Lena said. Kara could see that she was flagging, however.

 

“Do you want to shower before bed, or just go to sleep?” Kara asked, arms tight around Lena.

 

“Bed,” Lena said. “Shower in the morning.”

 

“Okay,” Kara said, lifting Lena again and carrying her to the bedroom. The bed was almost as comfortable as the Kryptonian mattresses. She made a mental note to get herself one of those, or ask one of the artificers to make her one for her new apartment. If she was staying on Earth, of course. Earth mattresses just didn’t cut it.

 

Lena was asleep before Kara could finish that thought, and she herself was gone seconds later. The mattress and the alliance of two alien races would have to wait until the morning.


	14. Fourteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our girls settle in on Earth, fight some bad guys, and talks continue between the President, the DEO, and the Kryptonians. Family bonding ensues.

* * *

Lena woke slowly, unsure of where she was. The last thing she remembered was some sort of danger, a feeling of strain as if she were carrying half the world on her shoulders.

 

Kara was beside her, fast asleep. Her arms were wrapped around Lena. Before Kara had entered her life, Lena had never entertained the idea of cuddling. She would meet someone, hook up, and then leave – or kick them out, if they were at her place. Even that, she tried to avoid. She wanted to keep it simple, keep her real life separate from her sex life. But this, with Kara, it wasn’t just sex. It was a love so deep that it terrified her. She had already lost Kara, and she could say with certainty how that felt. She knew that enduring that pain again would probably end her. She turned in Kara’s arms, looking at her sleeping face, and she relaxed slightly. Kara was here. It was all real – the Kryptonians, the weird pocket in space, the missiles that she’d sent to the Phantom Zone. She did take a moment to hope that there had been no-one in the Zone, but judging from what Kara had told her of her time inside the void, an instant death by the medium of nuclear weaponry would probably be a mercy.

 

She traced Kara’s lips gently, aware that they would have to go to the DEO sooner rather than later. Kara stirred a little, groaning under her breath.

 

“Good morning starshine,” Lena murmured, leaning forward to kiss Kara gently.

 

“Morn… five minutes,” Kara said, lips barely moving.

 

“It’s nearly time to go see your family again, baby. Don’t you want to go and see how things are going at the DEO?”

 

Kara nodded blearily, eyes still closed.

 

“M’comin’. On m’way,” she muttered, eyes opening briefly, just long enough for Lena to see them roll back in her head again.

 

“Gross,” she muttered.  She didn’t need to see that.

 

“Your face is…” Kara muttered, turning her back on Lena, who almost fell out of bed as a result.

 

“ _Your_ face is!” Lena replied, indignant, before sighing. Why was she arguing with Kara while she was asleep? She sat up carefully, pulling herself out of bed gently. She was a little unsteady on her feet, still, but she thought some food might take care of that. She sent a text to Jess, her assistant, asking if she could possibly arrange an order of breakfast foods, enough for ten people or so, to be delivered to her penthouse as soon as possible.

 

The reply came back quickly.

_“Of course, Miss Luthor.”_

 

She went into the bathroom, staring at her white face for a minute, a little concerned at her pallor and the deep black bruises under her eyes. She stripped off the clothes she was wearing – the Kryptonian version of scrubs, she assumed – and stepped into the shower, turning the temperature up as high as she could bear it, the water drumming on her head and the back of her neck. About five minutes later, when Lena had finished washing, she felt a puff of cool air on her back, and warm arms wended their way around her waist.

 

“Good morning, _:zrhueiao,”_ Kara murmured, nuzzling her face into Lena’s neck, through her wet hair, and kissing her skin.

 

“Good morning,” Lena said, shivering from the sensation. “I take it you’re feeling a little less grumpy now?”

 

“What do you mean?” Kara asked, confused. She nuzzled further into Lena’s neck.

 

“You told me my face was gross,” Lena said. “Just because I tried to wake you.”

 

“Wow,” Kara said. “Asleep me is unpleasant.”  


“Yeah,” Lena agreed, leaning back into Kara’s body. “I like awake you much better.”

 

“Mmm,” Kara murmured, her hands sliding downwards from Lena’s waist. “I think I can make it up to you.”

 

She did. Twice.

 

The doorbell rang as Lena was trying to get the strength back to stand unaided, and Kara sped them into the bedroom, dressed herself, and answered the door within seconds. Lena concentrated for a second, evaporating the water from her skin and hair, and then she dressed in comfortable jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt. She wasn’t trying to impress anyone today. She was a part of the alliance by virtue of her powers and her link to Kara. She didn’t need to be the head bitch in charge. Jess was doing an admirable job keeping L-Corp running while Lena dealt with everything that had happened since Kara left. Lena had been working sporadically, making most of the major decisions, but Jess had kept everything running. She deserved a huge raise and a promotion, and she was going to get it as soon as Lena had time to arrange it. She hadn’t given it much thought, but she felt that LCorp might be in her past, now. Between her powers, the future she wanted with Kara, and the alliance with the Kryptonians, she had an idea that she was going to be far too busy to run a Fortune 500 company.

 

She made her way into the living room, checking her phone and finding a few messages from Alex and Maggie and Winn, among others, just short ones thanking her for getting Kara home safely. Winn congratulated her for ‘getting it’, and she sent him back a smiley face, unsure exactly of what ‘it’ actually was. Kal-El had left her a rambling message, thanking her for her part in returning his cousin to him, not to mention the family he thought was long dead. She teared up a little at the messages. It was a strange feeling, to be someone that others were grateful to. She mostly got contempt, not thanks. It was a welcome change, and it was all because of Kara.

 

Kara was setting out food on the breakfast bar, and had half of a waffle sticking out of her mouth. Lena smiled fondly at the sight.

 

“Do you know how much I have missed Earth food, Lee?” Kara said, eyes wide. “I love Kryptonian food, but _Rao,_ I could have killed someone for a pizza or some potstickers while we were on that ship!”

 

“We’ll make sure to get both for dinner. Do you think you can put up with this for breakfast?” Lena asked, reaching Kara and leaning up on her tiptoes to kiss her.

 

“Yeth,” Kara said, around a mouthful of fried chicken slathered in syrup. Lena smiled fondly and then made herself up a plate of food. Jess had outdone herself, getting a little something from all of Lena’s favourite breakfast spots and somehow getting everything to arrive hot and at the same time. It was practically a miracle. She pulled apart some chicken, dipping it in syrup, and she chased it with a large piece of delicious waffle. Then a doughnut. And then some sort of bacon pastry. She was eating with gusto when she realised that Kara was staring at her. She washed down her food with a huge mouthful of hot coffee.

 

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked, puzzled.

 

“You’re eating like me,” Kara blurted.

 

“I told you I had to eat more, now,” Lena said. “Didn’t I? I nearly starved to death the first time I used my powers. I’m surprised I made it to this morning without eating, after that thing with the missiles.”

 

“Last time you had breakfast with me, you had an egg-white omelette with spinach. And kale,” Kara said, gaping.

 

“You’re just going to have get used to me eating more,” Lena said, shrugging. “It takes a lot of calories to transport yourself outside of the Milky Way.”

 

Kara just stared, amazed. Lena smiled, shovelling hash browns and scrambled eggs into her mouth. She felt better as soon as her stomach started protesting the volume of food she was sending down there. She leaned back, sighing in relief.

 

Kara finished her own plateful, reaching for another doughnut, and Lena glared at her. It was her favourite – peanut-butter & jelly filled. Kara’s eyes widened and she withdrew her hand, going for a cruller instead, and Lena nodded. Kara sighed in relief. After a moment, Lena grabbed the PB & J doughnut and ate it in two savage bites.

 

“So, do we know what’s happening today?” Lena asked. She’d been asleep for the majority of the previous day, and she had no idea how things had gone with the Kryptonians and their first meeting with the humans.

 

“I think just more ‘getting to know you,’ stuff,” Kara said. “The President has met my family, obviously, but there are a million and a half people on the ships. I think most of them would be grateful for the opportunity to spend time on a planet for a while. So we need to do some negotiating. Some of the younger people want to train as protectors, I suppose, like Kal and me. It remains to be seen if humans will want that or not. Two supers is one thing, but one for every city in the US? Or maybe the world? I do not know how that will be received.”

 

“Me either,” Lena said thoughtfully. “What about the rest? When are you going to start terraforming? You decided on Ganymede, right?”

 

“Yes,” Kara said. “I think my mother and Astra had tentatively planned to send one ship of engineers and scientists back to start the work, but ideally they need to have a few weeks of rest on Earth, first. If it’s at all possible. They will be working for months to get the surface ready for habitation.”

 

“Did your mother talk to the President about it yet? Allowing some of your people to stay on the surface for a while?”

 

“I know she was planning to, but after you arrived on the ship I didn’t really follow how things went. I was a little… distracted,” Kara said, smiling. She bit her bottom lip, looking up at Lena from under her eyelashes, and in a heart-beat they crashed into one another at superspeed. They ripped the clothes from each other’s bodies, Kara with her hands and Lena with her mind, and they ended up on top of the breakfast bar, the rest of their food landing on the floor as they made love desperately. When Kara used her tongue in a burst of superspeed, Lena swore, and the entire apartment rumbled, a crack appearing in the ceiling above them.

 

Afterwards, Lena slumped on top of Kara, her whole weight on Kara’s body.

 

“Rao,” Kara murmured, running her hands through Lena’s hair. Her head was resting on Kara’s chest.

 

“Indeed,” Lena said. “That was…”

 

“Yeah,” Kara breathed.

 

They sped through showering again and dressed carefully in non-ripped clothes. Kara wanted them to fly, but Lena insisted on teleporting.

 

“I need to practice as much as possible, and I need to get used to carrying passengers or objects, too,” Lena said. “So just hold on, okay?”

 

Kara nodded, looking concerned. Lena took her hand and concentrated, and when she opened her mouth they were on the balcony that Kara used as a landing pad at the DEO.

 

“I did not feel a thing,” Kara marvelled.

 

“Me either,” Lena said, but then Kara’s face darkened.

 

“Your nose is bleeding,” she said, rifling through her pockets and pulling out a handkerchief embossed with the El crest.

 

Lena put a hand to her face and was relieved to find only a small amount of blood.

 

“Kara, why do you have a handkerchief?” Lena asked, taking it from Kara and holding it to her nose.

 

Kara blushed. “Alex bought me a pack of them as a joke. But the joke is on her, because they’re really useful! I use them as Supergirl all the time.”

 

Lena smiled, shaking her head. “Speaking of Supergirl, are you planning on going back to being her? I think everyone on the planet knows you’re alive, now, but that doesn’t mean you have to. I mean, I know we haven’t talked much about it. You might be staying with your people on Ganymede, for all I know. I mean, it makes sense,” Lena said, closing her mouth abruptly as she realised she was babbling.

 

“Relax, my love,” Kara said, taking Lena’s hand in both of hers. “I have not made any decisions at all. My family are going to be close enough for us to use the transmat portals to go back and forth if I want. And the atmosphere is going to be fine for humans, so you can live with me there if that is what you want.”

 

Lena checked, finding that the bleeding had stopped, and she tucked Kara’s handkerchief into her pocket to launder later.

 

“We can talk about it another time,” she said. “But I’m glad to know that your plans include me.”

 

“Lena, my plans _are_ you. You are my future. Anything I decide will be with you, and for you.”

 

Lena smiled, her lips trembling.

 

 “I love you, Kara.”

 

“ _Khap zhao rrip, Lena-te_ ,” Kara replied, eyes bright.

 

They made their way into the DEO, and were directed back to the same room the Kryptonians and the President had met in the day before. They stepped through the door and saw that Alura and Zor-El were seated at a table with Cat Grant and the President, and that a number of other Kryptonians – scientists, mostly – were sitting at other tables, in animated conversation with some of the DEO’s science division, including Alex. Kara waved at Alex, and Lena smiled at her. The President stood and called them over to join them. Kara leaned over and kissed her parents on the forehead, murmuring something in _Kryptahniuo_. Lena smiled at them both.

 

“Good morning, Supergirl, Miss Luthor,” the President said.

 

“Please, Madam President. Call me Lena,” she said, smiling.

 

“And call me Kara,” Kara said. “It is not as if my name is a secret anymore.”

 

They all laughed and the President nodded.

 

“We have been discussing with your parents, Kara, about letting some Kryptonians have some shore leave on Earth, before they are sent back to Jupiter to begin the transformation of Ganymede. While I would love to say that it’s absolutely fine, I’m afraid I have reservations, given the recent invasion attempt by the Daxamites and General Astra’s past actions.”

 

Kara nodded.

 

“I can understand that, Madam President. Have you come to any conclusions?” Kara asked, looking at the others at the table.

 

“Nothing really, except for assurances that your people can be trusted,” Cat said, eyes sharp as ever.

 

“What do you think, _ieiu_?” Kara asked, looking at her mother.

 

“It is hard for me to fully absorb the fact that we have such physical power, here,” Alura said, sighing. “I can barely understand the need for any assurances of good behaviour, since the idea that we can fly and destroy buildings with our bare hands seems a little outlandish. I believe that we can agree to be bound, somehow, if that is possible. I understand that Kryptonite is the green rock with which my daughter murdered. I am loath to agree to its use on my people, but perhaps it is the only way.”

 

“I might be able to suggest something,” Lena said. “There is a metal I’ve heard of from the other aliens on Earth, which I believe I could manufacture in bulk, enough for thousands of people at once. It should be too dense for a Kryptonian to break. We could use the same technology that the DEO uses, artificial Kryptonite that can be activated remotely. If any of your people try to use their powers for anything they shouldn’t – trying to hurt someone or steal things they aren’t entitled to – they can be stopped at the push of a button. The Kryptonite will de-power them immediately, but they don’t have to be de-powered at all times. I understand from Kara that Kryptonite exposure is unpleasant to say the least.”

 

Kara looked at her lovingly.

 

“That sounds like a fair compromise to me. As long as our people agree not to wear Kryptonite shields when they come to Earth, and to keep the bracelets on at all times. Does that sound like a plan?” Kara asked.

 

The President and Cat shared a long look, and then the President nodded.

 

“I agree,” Alura said. “I believe that is a compromise. Our people can experience their powers, but can be stopped if they get out of hand. And of course if there is a problem with the behaviour of any of our people, Kara and Kal-El will be happy to intercede, as I’m sure Lena will be.”

 

“Of course,” Lena confirmed.

 

With that problem resolved for now, they talked a little about North Korea (who had unequivocally surrendered, turning over their remaining nuclear arsenal along with the group of aliens who had enhanced their technology enough that their missiles made it as far as the Kryptonian fleet) and about the reception on Earth of their visitors. In the US, there was considerable opposition to the plan to allow the Kryptonians to stay in the solar system, mostly fuelled by the likes of Fox News. But Europe was largely in favour of the visitors, especially given that they had clean fuel technology that would easily power the entire Earth and should eradicate the threat of global warming. Europe was big on the environment.

 

“Most of the response is positive, especially to the idea of instant communication using crystals or diamonds,” Cat explained. “And I think people believe this is the beginning of our own journey out into the stars.”

 

“We are happy to provide you with designs for ships that can travel faster than light in time. As our neighbours, it makes sense if you can travel through space, also. You may wish to explore the other planets in your solar system or even colonise them at a later date. Again, we will be happy to share our technology for transforming another moon or planet, as long as we can be sure that the technology will be used responsibly,” Alura said.

 

“I think any moves we make towards space travel or colonising other planets will have to be made slowly and patiently. A lot of people still don’t even like those from different countries, and those people hate aliens with a passion,” President Marsdin said. Lena chuckled internally. People would really not be happy if they knew that their President wasn’t human.

 

“That is prudent,” Zor-El said, his deep voice startling everyone at the table. Lena had the impression that he hadn’t spoken very much since they landed.

 

The President nodded at him. They talked about less important things for a while, and Lena excused herself to call Jess. She asked her Executive Assistant to ready a facility that could manufacture the bracelets they’d just talked about, and then she hung up, going to speak to J’onn about incorporating the DEO’s artificial Kryptonite technology. He agreed readily, clearly having been worried about keeping the Kryptonians under control. He then spoke to Agent Vasquez, who nodded and told Lena that she would make arrangements with Jess. Lena grinned. With those two working together, the bracelets would be ready in less than two weeks.

 

She returned to the reception room, finding Kara looking a little bored as the President and Cat talked earnestly to her parents.

 

Just then, an alarm began to peal through the DEO. Kara’s head snapped up, and Lena ran forward, grabbing her arm and transporting them both to the command centre of the DEO.

 

“What is happening?” Kara barked, as soon as she realised where they were.

  
“There are two large aliens fighting the NCPD near CatCo,” Winn confirmed. “ _Really_ large.”

 

“Do you have any spare suits here, Winn?” Kara asked.

 

“In my workroom. There’s one there for you, too, Blink,” he said, smiling at Lena. She nodded, teleporting to his workroom/lab, finding a burgundy-coloured suit with black cape and a burgundy half-mask, and a picture of a closed eye in the centre of the chest. She smiled wryly, and concentrated, switching clothes with the mannequin instantly. A second later, Kara blew in, donning her familiar red and blue, with a slightly new design that involved trousers instead of a mini-skirt, and looked heavier and more warrior-like than the original. She nodded at Lena.

 

“Ready?” she asked.

 

Lena nodded. She took Kara’s hand and ‘blinked’ them to the square outside CatCo. There were two aliens rampaging, knocking over police cars and crashing into buildings, destroying everything they touched. There already appeared to be two police officers down, and Lena touched her ear, clicking on her comms.

 

“Kara, can you keep them busy while I try to help these wounded officers?”

 

“Of course,” Kara answered sharply, shooting into the fray faster than the eye could follow. Lena flew to the side of the downed officers, finding Maggie Sawyer and her tall partner, Nate Martin, trying to help.

 

The officers’ injuries were severe, great gashes in their torsos from the beasts’ claws. Their bulletproof vests hadn’t helped at all. Lena pulled off their vests and tore open their shirts with a thought, and Maggie gasped, drawing back.

 

“Who the hell are you?” she asked, ready to pull her gun.

 

“Really, Maggie? I thought a mask wouldn’t fool you?” Lena said, in her driest tone.

 

“Shit, L…, I mean, what’s your name?”

 

“They’re calling me Blink,” Lena said, absently. She used her mind’s eye to look at the inside of the first officer’s wounds, pulling out material from their vest and dirt that shouldn’t be there. She started to knit up the wound, muscle fibres and nerves and blood vessels repairing themselves. She regenerated the skin over the wounds, watching them close up, and then she turned her attention to officer number two.

 

“Blink, huh?”

 

“Yes,” she said, cleaning the second officer’s wounds as she had the first, and knitting everything back together. The second officer still didn’t move, and she looked deep at his insides until she found a nick in the back of his heart. She closed it up and zapped his unmoving heart with a charge of electricity. Once, twice, and then he jumped, his chest heaving.

 

Lena sat back, trying to wipe her forehead and just getting the mask.

 

“Get them checked out at the hospital, will you, Maggie?” she asked. “I might have missed a bleeder.”

 

“Sure thing, _Blink,”_ Maggie said, with a mock-salute. Lena discreetly gave her the finger before flying into the fray.

 

“How are you doing, Supergirl?” she asked, not seeing Kara anywhere.

 

“Just taking a rest,” Kara said, and then Lena saw her standing up on the second floor of a nearby building, shaking her head as if to clear it.

 

Lena turned her attention to the monsters. She took an experimental look at their minds, and couldn’t penetrate them. She started sending a command to sleep in their direction, but it didn’t work on the aliens, causing two men who were filming the fight on their phones to fall asleep instead. She concentrated, swearing, and transported the two men a safe distance away before shooting fire at the aliens.

 

They roared in outrage, turning to her, trying to swat her out of the air like a fly. It made her laugh – it must have looked like two King Kongs trying to knock down a plane. Okay, so fire didn’t work. She lifted one of them with her mind, slamming him (or her) back down to the ground with force in an attempt to knock him out. It didn’t work. It jumped up, roaring even more loudly. She thought for a moment, and froze its feet to the ground. It _howled_ at that, and she figured she was onto something.

 

“Kara, when you’re recovered, use your freeze breath,” she said, and then she started to concentrate, hard, drawing cold from all around her and shooting it at the two aliens. They tried to move, but the colder it got, the less they could move. Kara appeared, hovering next to her, shooting her freeze breath, and soon enough the two aliens were frozen solid. Lena looked at them critically.

 

“What do you think those are?” she asked, head tilted.

 

“No idea. They kind of look like the trolls from Harry Potter,” Kara said, confused.

 

“Hmm. I wonder where they came from, and how they got here without being spotted before getting to the centre of the city like this.”

 

“I don’t know. Can you grab one?” Kara asked. “I’m a little tired, I don’t think I can manage both.”

 

“I’ll tell you what,” Lena said. “I’ll transport us all to the DEO.”

 

“No, Lee. You’re not ready for that,” Kara said. “Please.”

 

“Fine,” Lena relented. “I’ll carry one and you take the other.”

 

She lifted one of the troll-aliens with her mind, imagining a thick, unbreakable chain from her hand to its body, wrapped around the troll securely. She started flying, laughing as she saw Kara lift the other huge monster over her head. She looked like Mighty Mouse underneath it. They flew back to the DEO in under a minute, and were directed to a back entrance where the doors were large enough to allow the aliens inside. They deposited them in huge cells underground, and headed back to Winn’s workroom, where they both changed. They returned to the reception room, and were startled by the round of applause that greeted them both.

 

Kara nodded at everyone, smiling, and Lena copied her, her face burning. They returned to the table where Kara’s parents and the President and Cat were still sitting. They sat, confused, and the President smiled.

 

“We turned on the news report to show what you were doing,” she explained.

 

“Ah,” Lena said.

 

Alura reached over to touch Kara’s hand, her eyes wide.

 

“You are a miracle, my beautiful girl. I am so proud of you.”

 

Lena watched, beaming, as Kara’s eyes filled with tears, and she broke into a huge smile. She started talking to Alura, in a stream of _Kryptahniuo_ , and Lena watched them fondly.

 

“She’s really something, your girl,” Cat Grant said, smiling at Lena.

 

“She really is,” Lena agreed.

 

“And so are you, Miss Luthor. I can’t say I’d ever expected a Luthor to become a superhero, but if it had to be anyone, I’m glad it was you.”

 

“Thank you, Miss Grant. Coming from you, that means a lot.”

 

“So what else can you do, with these powers of yours?” Cat asked, eyes narrowed.

 

“I honestly haven’t found a limit, yet,” Lena said. “Generally speaking, if I can imagine a thing, I seem to be able to do it.”

 

“You saved those officers’ lives. How did you do that?” Cat asked.

 

“I can look at things, see them on a molecular level, I guess. I can make muscle fibres and skin knit back together, their skin regenerate. It’s easier to do than it is to explain, I have to be honest,” Lena said, shrugging.

 

“That’s incredible,” Cat said. “Have you always had these abilities?”

 

“No,” Lena said. “It all started after…”

 

She trailed off, looking at Kara, reminding herself that Kara was real, that she was alive. She took a deep breath. She realised suddenly that there was a hand in hers. Cat’s.

 

“Your powers developed after a trauma?” she asked, gently.

 

Lena looked at her for a moment, and then nodded.

 

“Yes. I was angry, thinking about my mother, what she’d done, and I set my penthouse on fire. But it wasn’t like real fire, exactly; it was under my control. I could touch it. Then some other stuff happened, and I started testing it – I am a scientist, after all – and I found that I could manipulate matter, freeze things, burn them. I worked out how to use the power to make me fly, and then the teleporting happened one night because I needed a hug, if you can believe that. I’d just realised that the dreams I was having of Kara were real, and I was talking to Winn on my phone, and then I was standing there in front of him at the DEO. I’m just glad it wore pyjamas that night,” Lena finished wryly.

 

“That would make a hell of a story,” Cat said, with a manic gleam in her eye. It quickly faded, though. “I can’t tell a soul, though, because you can’t be identified. Bad enough that we had to name you to the Earth Council. Dammit.”

 

Lena shrugged. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish I could let you have the story.”

 

“Do you have any idea where the power came from? I mean, you’re not an alien, I assume, and you aren’t from another Earth – or are you?” Cat asked, tilting her head.

 

Lena explained the accident when she was a child, how her mother had subjected her to testing of the abilities back then, and how they’d faded.

 

“Your mother really was a piece of work, wasn’t she?” Cat said, jaw tight.

 

“She was,” Lena said, gritting her teeth a little. “I miss her terribly.” The sarcasm dripping from her tone could have covered the Taj Mahal.

 

“Congratulations on the ‘hereditary condition’ she and Lex developed,” Cat said, saluting Lena sardonically. Lena just lifted an eyebrow, smiling.

 

Cat frowned a moment later, and spoke again, quietly.

 

“I may need to speak with you about those healing powers of yours. Soon.”

 

Lena looked at her carefully, seeing lines of strain around Cat’s mouth and eyes that she hadn’t noticed before.

 

“Of course, Cat. Anything for you. Kara loves you so much.”

 

“Rao, I’m hungry,” Kara said, loudly. Lena’s stomach rumbled, reminding her that she had just used her powers and needed to replenish her energy.

 

The President called someone over and a few minutes later, Kara and Lena were being served with a huge lunch and equally huge glasses of chocolate milk and soda. They started eating with gusto, ignoring amused looks from Cat and the President.

 

They continued with their discussions until later that day, when the Kryptonians returned to their ships and the President and Cat to wherever they were staying.

 

“How would you feel about having dinner with Alex and Maggie?” Kara asked. “I’ve really missed my sister.”

 

“Of course, Kara. Anything you want,” Lena said, smiling.

 

They made the arrangements, inviting Maggie and Alex to Lena’s penthouse since it was much bigger than their apartment. Kara and Lena took their leave from the DEO staff, and Lena allowed Kara to carry her.

 

“I’m just humouring you, you know that, right?” she said, as Kara looked down at her fondly.

 

“I know. But you scared me with that nosebleed this morning, so you’ll just have to put up with it. Okay?” Kara said, leaning down to kiss Lena cheekily.

 

“Fine,” Lena said, rolling her eyes. “But only for you.”

 

Kara grinned and pushed her speed a little more, landing them on Lena’s balcony. They stepped in to the apartment and Lena went to the refrigerator, finding enough food to feed a small army. Which meant that there was just enough for both of them for a couple of meals.

 

“I think maybe we should get some take-out,” she said, sighing. “If we cook for Alex and Maggie we’re gonna run out of food first thing tomorrow.

 

“Sure,” Kara said, affably. “As long as I don’t have to cook.”

 

Maggie and Alex arrived about an hour later, and Kara and Lena had availed themselves of the bathing facilities in the meantime, and were dressed in official ‘girl’s night’ apparel, which was fluffy pyjamas, apparently.

 

Lena snorted when Alex and Maggie took off their long coats and she saw that they were both wearing fluffy pyjamas too.

 

“What?” Alex said, defensively. “You said it was a girl’s night!”

 

Lena grinned and tapped up a food order on her tablet while watching Alex and Kara roughhousing over alcohol – Kara was trying to dissuade Alex from having any, whereas Alex was surprisingly sneaky and managed to leave the kitchen no less than four times out of five with something alcoholic.

 

“Kara, darling. Let her have a drink. If she gets too drunk I can always burn the alcohol out of her blood system. It won’t be pleasant, but it’ll make sure she doesn’t get ill in the morning,” Lena offered pleasantly.

 

Alex looked at her, wide-eyed, and then returned the bottle of whiskey she had somehow managed to stow in the hoodie top of her pyjamas and the two mini-bottles of vodka and a small bottle of peach schnapps she’d somehow managed to finagle from the kitchen.

 

Kara watched her, a huge grin on her face, and Alex just glared.

 

Kara went to the couch and gently fist-bumped Lena.

 

“You can hide from me, but you can’t hide from team SuperCorp,” Kara said, looking smug.

 

“Wait, is that like… a portmanteau or something? Because I don’t think I like it,” Lena said, critically. “How about SuperBlink?”

 

“Oh, I like that, Luthor,” Maggie said, offering a high five. “I like that.”

 

“Thanks,” Lena said, high-fiving back. She suddenly felt warm, deep in her heart, like she was home.  

 

“I think I prefer Mrs Zor-El,” Kara said, quietly.

 

“Oh,” Lena said, suddenly dry-mouthed. She turned to stare at Kara.

 

“Why do you look surprised?” Kara asked, dryly. “I am pretty sure I saw my Aunt Lara measuring you for wedding robes the other day.”

 

“Is that what she was doing? She told me she was measuring the circumference of my head and torso to compare to famous Kryptonians. Something about a tradition?”

 

“Yes, the ‘tradition’ of being bonded Kara said, laughing. “But of course that only matters if you are inclined to say yes.”

 

Lena smiled back.

  
“What do you think, you big Kryptonian goof? Like I’d transport myself past Jupiter to cuddle just anyone?”

 

Kara threw herself forward and started kissing Lena with serious passion and intention. Luckily, Maggie coughed loudly before things went too far. Alex looked like she wanted to disappear.

 

“Sorry, you crazy kids. But I think maybe you might want to leave that until later. We came for dinner, not dinner and a show.” Maggie grinned at them impishly.

 

Lena smiled, her face heating up, and Kara pulled away, straightening her glasses out of habit. She didn’t really need their dampening effect anymore, Lena suspected, but it was always better to take precautions.

 

“So, you two are getting hitched? And you didn’t even tell me?” Alex asked, once her own blush had abated somewhat.

 

“Sorry, Alex. No-one has actually done the proposal thing yet, if you want to be technical about it, though that little exchange might pass for one,” Lena said, grinning. “But if Kara means it, and I sense that she does, I’m in. I want to marry you, Kara.”

 

She turned her head to look adoringly at Kara, ignoring the ‘barf’ noises coming from Maggie’s direction.

 

“Of course I am serious,” Kara said, looking slightly offended. “But I have to make you a bracelet, first. And then I can properly propose. Kal-El suggested we can hold the service at the Fortress, and his father can officiate,” Kara said. “I think that is fitting, given that it was sort of Jor-El who brought us back to one another.”

 

Lena nodded, and by now there were tears streaming down her face.

 

“I love you so much,” she managed, and then, to everyone’s surprise, Alex let out a huge wail, and was tackled from three directions by her family, who held her while she cried out all of her deeply-buried grief and loss.

 

“I can’t believe you died, you complete fucker,” Alex said, as she started to calm down.

 

Kara chuckled.

 

“I love you too, sister,” she said, between tears and debilitating bouts of giggles.

 

They somehow managed to fall asleep, all four of them, with blankets from the back of the couch wrapped around them, and Lena woke with Kara’s arms wrapped around her from behind, and Alex’s head on her belly. Maggie was lying in the opposite direction, her feet tucked under Kara’s body, and her arms wrapped around Alex’s thighs. It was a more than odd way to wake up, but Lena found herself tearing up instead of jumping up and trying to get away. These people – this family – they had accepted her as one of them, something she’d wanted since she was four years old and was unfortunate enough to be adopted by her biological father, into a cold, empty house. Now, here in her previously soulless penthouse, she was wrapped up with her family, arms and legs akimbo, and no-one minded because they just wanted to be close after a loss that had almost broken them all. She managed to stop herself breaking into sobs, but the tears continued to run down her face as she stroked Alex’s hair and put her hand on Maggie’s calf, just holding on. Both women made a tiny noise of satisfaction and went back to snoring, and Lena lay there, family all around her, crying like a baby. Had Kara been awake, she would have told Lena that her tears tasted sweet, because they were tears of true, unbridled joy.


	15. Fifteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Kryptonians make headway in dealing with the leaders of Earth. Kara spreads some hope, and makes a decision.

* * *

Things moved rather quickly after that. Kara had always known that her mother was a deeply intelligent woman, skilled in diplomacy and of course the legal system of Krypton and of all the star systems involved in the tentative alliance of the seven known galaxies. Those known to Krypton, at least. Kara was now aware of many more aliens from places so far-flung that she couldn’t even count the number of light-years involved.

 

Alura had managed to sweet-talk leaders from all of Europe, including Eastern Europe, a feat which Kara would never have expected, given the history of those nations. Along with the President, she had meetings scheduled with at least half of the leaders of the Middle East, too. It was expected that those who held interests in the continued use of fossil fuels would be very resistant to any changes in the world’s energy, but Alura had already agreed a plan with those in power in all of the countries she’d spoken to, and it involved giving patents to each country for various pieces of technology, for a set period of time only. Those who currently controlled the world’s energy reserves would instead be offered the patents to Kryptonian communications technology, with the proviso that they provide such technology at an affordable rate, including free tech for those who couldn’t afford it, the cost of which would be reimbursed back to those countries with diamonds once the Kryptonians began mining. Given that those countries involved would have a customer base covering the whole planet, it was likely to be an extremely lucrative patent.

 

“You know, mom… I never realised how adept you were, at all this. I was always in awe of you as a child, but that was because I saw you as this great Judicar. And then I found out about what you did to Aunt Astra, and that changed things. I saw you as cold, then. Heartless.”

 

Her mother blinked, breathing in slowly. They were sitting in Lena’s apartment, Lena and Alex having taken Jor-El and Lara to the Fortress of Solitude to show them what Superman had built there.

 

“You know that is settled, mom,” Kara said quietly. “I mention it only because you have changed so much, but you possess all of this skill that I never saw as a child. You are talking an entire world into accepting this alliance. A world that was recently invaded by Daxamites, of all things. You amaze me.”

 

Alura smiled.

 

“You are sweet to say such things. But in truth I could not do any of this, had you and Kal-El not proved to those on Earth that you are faithful protectors of all of humankind. From your example, the governments of Earth are convinced that our people are mostly honourable, despite a few examples to the contrary.”

 

Kara ducked her head, blushing slightly.

 

“Your… your death, that proved to humans that you would literally give your life for them. According to their nailed god, a man can have no greater love than to give his life for his friends. Your return from the dead has some of them worshipping you and Kal, which is somewhat disturbing. But it is that precise thing that their god did for them, they believe. Died and lived again. And I understand that Kal did the same, at one time. It’s not surprising that they believe you to be immortal gods.”

 

Alura looked sad and disturbed, but she looked at Kara intently.

 

“I did not exactly set out to die. Nor did I die helping them – I died because one of them poisoned me,” Kara said, sadly.

 

“I am glad that your bond-mate helped to alleviate that threat,” Alura said.

 

“She amazes me,” Kara said dreamily.

 

“She should. Her powers eclipse ours by some margin. I believe she could destroy planets if she wished,” Alura said, and her eyes were a little crinkled at the edges – a sign of worry.

 

“You think she would ever do something like that?” Kara asked, a little defensively. “She has never done anything to hurt anyone, other than Cadmus.”

 

“I know that,” Alura said, smiling slightly. “She fought for you even after you were gone. That speaks to her courage, her character. But such power? What is it the humans say? Absolute power corrupts absolutely?”

 

“That is the saying,” Kara said. “But Lena is amazing. She is incredible, and she has done nothing but help, to do good things, since she developed her powers.”

 

“Even so, Kara. Not many have the power she wields. And anyone can be corrupted by that. I am frightened of my own power and what it might do, I confess. I have been corrupted by power before.”

 

“I know, mother,” Kara said. “But I do not believe Lena could be swayed.”

 

“Still. Watch for the signs, Kara. It is likely that if she were to be corrupted, if she were tempted, she would only be brought back by those she loves.”

 

Kara nodded.

 

“I do not believe it will happen, but I will watch for it.”

 

“Good,” Alura said. “Now, to important matters. Your bonding.”

 

“Mother, I… we haven’t even really talked about it. I have not yet finished making her bracelet. It is not time, yet.”

 

“Make sure you do not let the right time pass you by, _inah_. If you do not bond her soon, some other will try to win her from you. Several of our younger people have already enquired as to her status and availability.”

 

Kara frowned.

 

“No-one will take her from me, unless that is what she wishes. If someone cares to try, they may face me in single combat, where I will annihilate them,” Kara said, darkly. “You may tell any potential suitors that.”

 

Alura chuckled.

 

“I already did, my daughter, have no doubt.”

 

Kara laughed then, and they talked of inconsequential things for a while. Then Kara’s earpiece beeped, and after a moment of static, Susan Vasquez’s voice came down the line.

 

“Supergirl, if you’re free, there’s a hostage crisis in an office downtown.”

 

“On my way,” Kara said, standing and spinning into her uniform.

 

“May I accompany you?” Alura asked, looking curious. “I have yet to see you in action in person.”

 

“Of course,” Kara said. “I think I would like that.”

 

She sped to the scene, Alura in her wake. Alura was still familiarising herself with her powers, and she was nervous of them. But she enjoyed flying as much as the next person.

 

Kara landed gently next to Maggie Sawyer, who was a brilliant hostage negotiator. She had learned, the hard way, not to just dive in and interrupt Maggie when she was working. Alura stayed back, somewhere, staying out of sight.

 

“Detective Sawyer,” Kara said, in her ‘Supergirl’ voice. “Is there any way I can help?”

 

Maggie smiled.

 

“You can, Supergirl. We’d like to end this without bloodshed, if possible. The guy inside, Ed Jordan, was fired a few days ago, and his wife has used that as a reason to withhold contact with his kids. He seems sincere and in a lot of pain. Can you go talk to him, maybe? Give him some of that trademark hope of yours?”

 

“I will do my best,” Kara said, squeezing Maggie’s shoulder gently. “Thank you for keeping the scene from devolving into violence.”

 

Maggie nodded, flushing a little. Kara flew inside, shooting up the staircase and emerging on the third floor, where the hostage-taker was standing, rubbing his head nervously, gun in his hand. His hostages were sitting on the floor, lined up. They looked terrified.

 

“Mr Jordan?” she called out, quietly. He jumped, and the gun went off, bullet heading towards a young pregnant woman. Kara caught it in super-speed, returning to the spot she had been occupying before anyone could blink.

 

Ed stared in confusion at the gun, then at the poor woman who had almost been shot.

 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

 

He was weeping, and Kara called out his name again, quietly.

 

“Mr Jordan. I am here to help you. I know you do not want to hurt anyone. I know you have been hurt. I want to help you any way I can. But you have to let these people go. If you hurt anyone, then your life will be over. You will end up in prison and you will never forgive yourself. Your children will have to live without a father. I know you do not want that to happen.”

 

He turned slowly, looking at her.

 

“I don’t want to hurt them. But my wife will never let them see me again. She hates me. This was all the excuse she needed. Me getting fired, because they have to let people go. They don’t care about us; they just care about profits. I’ve given years of my life to this place, and they just threw me away like I was garbage.”

 

Kara looked at him sadly. She could see the depth of his pain, how he felt trapped and pushed into doing something that he would never normally do.

 

“You know, things happen that way sometimes. When I was a child, on my planet, I saw things like that happen all the time. I did not really understand; my family were part of the ruling council, and as their heir I guess I never experienced things like that. I always had a fair shake. Probably more than a fair shake. But a friend of mine, Al-Zod, was taken away from the school we went to after his uncle did something awful. It did not last for long; the whole planet died a while later. But Al-Zod, and other kids like him – they were not treated fairly. If their House was not one of the few that were revered, they could end up in the mines, or cleaning the dead seas, among other things. They did not get a fair shake. A lot of them died – I read it in our Archives, when I got older. They were just thrown aside, like they were garbage, and our people believed it was the will of Rao. The will of our god. But it wasn’t, and it isn’t. You deserve loyalty from the company you work for, but they’re only loyal to money. Things are not fair, Ed. It sucks. I fly around saving kids from being run over; I catch planes when they fall. But I cannot fix everything. I cannot fix the injustices that happen all the time. What I can do, is do my best. My people are here, now. They have learned some lessons from their years in space, and they are willing to share their technology. Things like energy and communications and healthcare are going to change, drastically, over the next few years. This struggle, this difficulty that everyone has in making ends meet, this obsession with money – it will not be an issue after a while. And for now – once we have gone through the process of sorting all of this out – I think I can find you a job. If you are interested. And I will speak for you at any trial, and tell them how desperate you were to do this. How much pain you were in. I promise that, Ed. Please. Let them go. You know that I could take them all away in a second, that I could take your gun and knock you out or have you in handcuffs before you could blink. But I want you to give this up, because I know that you can. Please.”

 

She held out a hand for him, beseeching him to do the right thing. He wiped his forehead, shaking, and then held the gun out to her, holding it by the barrel. Kara stepped closer, taking it from him. She pulled him into a hug and he wept on her shoulder. She nodded to the hostages to go, which they did, many of them thanking her as they passed. Ed cried for a little while, and then she walked him outside, one hand on his elbow, guiding him. She handed him over to Maggie, explaining that she wanted to be kept abreast of his progress, that she would speak for him to any prosecutor or judge, including those who dealt with custody of his children, and that she would be available to arrange employment for him as soon as he was released.

 

“Thank you, Supergirl,” Maggie said, and they shook hands, camera flashes illuminating them.

 

“You are the ones who deserve thanks,” Kara said, loudly enough to be heard by the crowds around them. “You give people hope, Detective. You and the other heroes out there. You are the reason I have hope.”

 

Maggie nodded solemnly, and Kara squeezed her hand before flying off slowly, waving at those in the crowd before she flew off. A few seconds later her mother joined her, presumably having watched the incident from somewhere nearby.

 

“You inspire me, _inah_. I was perhaps not so fond of this idea of our people becoming guardians of Earth, before. But now I see the hope you inspire, by using your heart instead of your strength, your power. It is a wonderful thing to witness, and I thank Rao that I have lived long enough to see this. I am so proud, Kara, that you turned out as you did. I love you so much.”

 

Kara turned to look at her mother, who had tears streaming down her face. Kara stopped in mid-air, her mother mirroring her.

 

“If I am anything, it is because you are my mother,” Kara said. “Without you I would have been nothing. A lost child on an alien world. But you taught me to hope, taught me that I could do anything, be anyone I wanted. If I had not had that, I never would have used these powers. I would have hid away, never hoped for better. Never tried to change anything. I would have cowered in fear, fear that the humans would kill me if they knew who I was. Instead, I chose to stand up and fight for the ones I love. I will _always_ choose that, because of you.”

 

Her mother moved a little closer, and pulled Kara into her arms. They hugged there in mid-air, and Kara’s heart was fuller in that moment than it had been in many years. She was finally home, her old life and her new coming together to make a new life, a new home. It gave her incredible joy to know that Krypton was not dead, and that Earth was about to be given a new lease on life.

 

“Race you home,” she said, winking at her mother before taking off.

 

“Hey! That is cheating!” her mother called after her.

 

“Welcome to Earth!” Kara threw over her shoulder. She smiled broadly as she landed on Lena’s balcony just ahead of her mother. Life was good.

 

***

 

Lena dropped three rowdy Hellgrammites at the DEO, filling out a report and heading home. Home, to Kara. It had been two weeks since the Kryptonian’s arrival on Earth, and between rescues, fights with other aliens, and producing the bracelets to allow Kryptonians to take shore leave on Earth, she’d barely been able to see Kara. Kara had been busy with the same things, but she had the additional burden of speaking to representatives of governments across the world as Supergirl, assuring them of her people’s good intentions and standing by her mother’s side, along with others from Krypton’s Ruling Council. The Council was soon to be disbanded, however, because Kara’s mother had realised that, while maintaining the status quo had been a good idea while they were in Argo City, it was no longer fair to keep power within only a few families. She had floated the idea with the Council itself, and they had agreed. Democratic, fair elections were to take place once their new home was ready, and would be overseen by representatives of Earth, to ensure that there was no wrongdoing by any of the current Ruling Council.

 

Lena landed on her balcony, changing from her ‘Blink’ costume and donning sweatpants and a loose t-shirt, along with fluffy socks. Kara had already changed her so much, and it had all been for the better. This habit of dressing comfortably – it let her body know that it was time to relax, time to drop the burdens of the day. While she didn’t necessarily have pain from tension and stress, it was a good reminder to relax and to take stock of her day, and she would meditate later, just as Jor-El the AI had taught her. Lara and others had offered to teach her some more of the Kryptonian mental disciplines, and she intended to take them up on those offers, to help her focus and increase her powers.

 

“Hey,” she called out, sensing Kara nearby. As she rounded the corner, she saw Kara sprawled out on the couch, snoring. She was still in her Supergirl outfit, and her cape was wrapped around her like a blanket. Lena briefly mourned the loss of the skirt for a moment, because Kara would have been flashing… well. She made a mental note to tease Kara about the skirt later, in the bedroom.

 

Lena smiled, and then went on a super-speed dash around the apartment, making a huge, sumptuous dinner for them to share. The oven was switched on, a stew cooking, along with piles of vegetables and potatoes. There were four cakes in the bottom oven, already starting to rise slightly with the help of a little warming of the oven air.

 

“Hey, sweetie,” she said, sitting down on the edge of the couch and stroking Kara’s hair. “I missed you.”

 

“I miss…misses oo,” Kara said, slurring words and snuffling into her cape.

 

“You want some food, baby?” Lena asked, in a teasing tone.  

 

Kara sat up straight, eyes wide.

 

“Food!”

 

“Yes, sweetie. Food. You really must be tired, huh?” Lena said, cupping Kara’s jaw in one hand.

 

“Yes,” Kara said, still looking dazed. “Long day, talking with mom and then a hostage rescue and three fires. My mom had to help with the last one. I think I used up all my breath.”

 

“You didn’t blow your powers, did you?” Lena said, looking concerned.

 

“No. Need solar lamps, though,” Kara said, wearily.

 

“I wonder if I might be able to help with that,” Lena said, thoughtfully. She concentrated on the radiation in the air, pulling more and more into the room, simultaneously shielding herself against any of the more harmful rays. She built up the radiation, centring it on Kara, and she smiled proudly as Kara perked up almost immediately. She concentrated fiercely for another second, settling a shield around Kara that would keep the radiation confined to her, and making the shield itself pull in the radiation without further input from Lena. A few seconds later and it was done.

 

“How… What did you… Did you just make sunlight for me?” Kara asked, gaping.

 

“I just grabbed a little of the radiation from around us and centred it on you. It won’t bring you up to 100%, but it will help give you back a little,” Lena said, shyly.

 

“By Rao, you amaze me,” Kara said, eyes wide. “Marry me?”

 

Lena froze in place, turning to look at Kara, wide-eyed.

 

“Do you mean that?” she asked, hand on her chest, shocked. They had talked about it, yes, but… they were partially joking. She hadn’t expected this, not so soon.

 

“I do,” Kara said, eyes shining. She disappeared, speeding away, and returned, down on one knee, a beautifully ornate bracelet in her hand. It was made from two bright, shining metals; one silver coloured, the other one gold. The gold was being used as decoration, and as Lena looked closely she could see highly embellished versions of the L-Corp logo as well as the logo Winn had designed for her suit, a closed eye, to represent a blink. And of course, the House of El crest was front and centre.

 

“Kara…” she breathed, looking from the bracelet to Kara and back in wonder.

 

“I know this is not… I was planning this big thing, with my parents, and Alex and Maggie, and Winn and… but then you were standing there looking so perfect, and I could not help it. Rao, the bracelet is not even finished…”

 

Lena fell to her knees in front of Kara.

 

“I want to marry you, Kara Zor-El Danvers. I love you with my whole heart, and I don’t care if the bracelet isn’t finished. I don’t care if there is no bracelet. I just care that it’s you asking. So yes, Kara. The answer’s yes.”

 

Kara stared at her, wide-eyed, then threw herself forward, wrapping Lena up in her arms.

 

“I love you so much,” she kept repeating, and tears were dripping down between them. Lena kissed her fervently, in tears herself, and they fell into each other, there on the floor near the kitchen, bracelet and clothes discarded.

 

It was a little later, and Lena was admiring her bonding bracelet, lying on the couch with her head in Kara’s lap. They’d eaten the huge meal she got ready, and Kara was drowsing again, her snores filling the apartment. Lena was falling asleep, too, but there was something she wanted to do before she slept. She sat up, lifting Kara from the couch effortlessly, and carried her through to the bedroom. When Kara’s snores began again, she blinked to the lab in her training facility. She had plenty of materials there, metals and gemstones and elements that she’d collected from aliens, contacts of Maggie’s and others. She worked for hours, using her own hands and powers to forge an unbreakable metal from several types of metal blended together. It was an alloy that would make L-Corp a fortune if she sold it, but her heart was telling her that Earth would change drastically in the next few years, and in helping the Kryptonians to spread their technology rather than concentrating on making money, she would change the world the way she’d always wanted. L-Corp was barely a concern, now. She had half a mind to spend its money on clean water and modified crops that would grow anywhere, medications, anything and everything that would help people. The board would never allow it, but she could spend her own money, at least. She made a mental note to talk to Jess about it.

 

The bracelet was finally ready. The El Crest was front and centre, of course, but Lena had used platinum to make tiny, delicate pictures all across the bracelet, showing the story of her and Kara, how they had met, how they fell in love. Some of the pictures made her cry, the one of Kara surrounded by tiny shards of emerald in particular, and the one of her funeral pod. But it told their story, and there was room for more. Lena fervently hoped that there would be much, much more to their story.

 

She cleared up her lab and then blinked back to the apartment, finding Kara’s snores still shaking the apartment. She grinned, then spun into pyjamas and headed into the bedroom. After a short time meditating, she placed the bracelet carefully on Kara’s nightstand, wrapped in purple velvet. The colour of royalty. As far as Lena was concerned, Kara was royalty, on Earth. She would give anything for Earth’s people, and that made her the kind of leader the entire planet needed.

 

She snuggled up to Kara, who made a little whuffing noise and pulled Lena a little closer. Lena sighed in happiness and fell asleep almost immediately.

 

She was awoken by a screech, and in an instant she was standing in the middle of the room, her fists on fire.

 

“Woah, Blink,” Kara said, wide-eyed. “It’s okay! I just… I found your bracelet!”

 

Lena dropped her hands, letting the fire flame out. “I’m sorry. I just… I’ve been on guard for a while, you know?”

 

“I know,” Kara said, smiling. “Now, come here and kiss me, because I can’t believe how beautiful this is,” Kara said, grinning.

 

Lena moved to Kara, tipping her head up, and Kara kissed her fervently.

 

“I love you, my beautiful fiancée. Thank you so much for this bracelet,” she said, eyes wide in awe.

 

“You’re worth it, darling,” Lena said, sincerely.

 

“It’s incredible, Lena. I don’t know how you made the pictures so tiny and detailed, but they’re incredible.”

 

Lena blushed a little.

 

“I tried. I’m not exactly an artist, but my mind kind of… copied images from my brain, I guess.”

 

She scratched at the back of her neck, and Kara smiled at her, that beaming smile that she had missed so much when Kara was gone.

 

“God, I love you,” she said, pushing Kara up against the nearest wall and kissing her until they were both breathless.

 

“Much as I would love to finish this,” Kara said, chest heaving, “I think we are needed at the DEO today. Jess and Vasquez have the first bracelets, and my mom and I will be testing them before we bring down the first batch of Kryptonians for shore leave.”

 

“Okay,” Lena said, one hand in the centre of Kara’s chest. “What is the protocol, with our bonding bracelets? Do we wear them all the time, or just for the ceremony?”

 

“We wear them all the time. If that is okay?”

 

“It is,” Lena said, smiling. “I love you, Kara Zor-El.”

 

Kara kissed her again, and things escalated immediately. They were late to the DEO.

 

***

 

Kara stepped into the room where the Kryptonians and the President and her people had been meeting. She was nervous; she’d had a plan for proposing to Lena, with her mother and others there. But Lena had just been so beautiful, and she’d set up a self-sustaining field that drew in solar energy to replenish Kara’s powers, and Kara just couldn’t resist.

 

As she stepped into full view of those in the room, Lena by her side, she paused, looking for her mother and father and Alex and Eliza, who had been helping with working out how to distribute Kryptonian medical supplies across the planet.

 

Alex saw them first, and gasped. Eliza turned at the noise and smiled widely, eyes filling. Alura and Zor-El turned as one, and both stood still, faces blank for a moment. Then they looked at each other and smiled.

 

Kara could have wept. Lena started to walk into the room, tugging Kara behind her. They were engulfed in a huge hug from Kara’s family, and then her two mothers were looking at her bracelets, pronouncing them exquisite. They were all moved to tears by the pictures on Kara’s, the story of Kara and Lena and their love. There were tears and smiles and hugs, before J’onn appeared, hugging them all. He then demanded they got back to work.

 

The Kryptonite tests were painful, almost excruciating. Lena adjusted the formula a little, making it less painful and more exhausting, ensuring that any Kryptonian who did go off the rails would be stopped in their tracks immediately. Her mother was less than pleased with the Kryptonite, but she understood, now that she had used her powers, that her people had power beyond reason on Earth, and it needed to be curtailed until they had all proven that they could be trusted.

 

After the Kryptonite tests, and a huge meal, Lena went off to the manufacturing plant making the bracelets, to adjust the formula there and get them into full production, and Kara answered a few calls as Supergirl, putting out fires and saving a jumper from a bridge, sitting with the man for two hours, just talking. In the end he came to her, and she carried him to safety, taking him to hospital to speak to a psychiatrist who would arrange some therapy for the man. She told him to call for her, anytime, if she needed to talk.

 

After all of that she was exhausted. She went to Lena’s apartment, and a while after she’d arrived, Alex and Maggie joined her, bringing food, wine and Tamaranian ale, and they ate together. After they’d finished eating and were settled on the balcony, looking out at National City, Alex turned to Kara, giving her a ‘serious’ look.

 

“What is it?” Kara asked, frowning.

 

“I wanted to talk to you about something. Your name, to be specific.”

 

“What’s wrong with my name?” Kara asked indignantly.

 

Maggie snort-laughed, and Kara frowned belligerently.

 

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Alex said. “I just… since you came back, you haven’t once talked about Kara Danvers. I know that… technically, she’s dead. But I thought you’d want to go back to your old life, but… do you want to just be Kara Zor-El, now? Because it seems like you do.”

 

Kara’s brain stopped in its tracks. She hadn’t even thought about Kara Danvers. She’d been so busy trying to get the Kryptonians to Earth, to get agreement from the people of Earth, and then everything with Lena, that she hadn’t even thought about being Kara Danvers again. She would have to move elsewhere and change her name, maybe her hair and eyes, before she could be a civilian again. But was that even something she wanted?

 

“You know, Lena talked to me a little, before… She asked me if I wanted to go back to being Supergirl. I don’t think she ever doubted I would want to go back to my human life. But… I think you might be right. Pretty much the first thing I did when I arrived on Earth– and Lena, too – was to jump into danger. Rescue people, fight bad guys. I… I do not think that I need to be Kara Danvers anymore. Not that I do not want to be part of our family, Alex. That is not it at all. But with my birth family close by, and you and Eliza and Jeremiah here, I feel like… I can just be Kara Zor-El, now. And, apart from designing and making the bracelets to cut Kryptonians off from their powers, Lena has not really done anything with her business since we returned. In all honesty, I cannot see her going back to being a CEO, either. I think that, whatever we do, we will do together. And it will not be journalism for me, or business for her.”

 

Alex and Maggie were both smiling at her, the former a little sadly.

 

“I knew it,” Alex said. “I kind of didn’t want to be right, because I love who Kara Danvers is just as much as I love Supergirl. But now I get to meet Kara Zor-El, too. I’m sure that she will be just as awesome as the other two.”

 

She was a little teary-eyed, and Kara held out her arms immediately, pulling her sister into her arms, and beckoning Maggie to join in their group hug. Maggie put her arms round both Danvers women, and they all held on to each other, smiles and tears mixed.

 

“Things are changing, huh?” Kara said, as they pulled apart.

 

“Yes. But definitely for the better,” Alex said, and Maggie nodded.

 

“To the future,” Maggie said, lifting her wine glass for a toast.

 

“To the future,” Kara and Alex echoed, the words echoing around the apartment.

 

When Kara was in bed that night, and Lena slipped in beside her, she woke a little and whispered those words again before falling into a dreamless sleep.


End file.
